Courts and Tribunals Bill

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

16:22

Moved by

[Lord Lemos]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have met me to discuss the Bill over the last few weeks. I am especially grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, for his independent review of the criminal courts, which provides the foundations for this Bill. I have now met him several times, and I hope that he will continue to work closely with me and the Government as the Bill progresses. I am always conscious of the extraordinary depth of legal expertise in your Lordships’ House and in this debate. I know that the Government will greatly benefit from that wisdom as this Bill progresses.

With some notable exceptions, such as fraud and online crime, crime rates are on a long-term downward trend. Nevertheless, we prosecute and sentence more people every year, and the length of sentences has doubled over the last 30 years. Despite that, a majority of the public continue to believe that crime is going up and sentences are too short. The prisons are full, and the courts have a substantial backlog. In other words, there is an entrenched breakdown of public confidence in the criminal justice system. That is at the heart of this Bill’s purpose and all the Government’s criminal justice reforms. These are not reforms of expediency or efficiency, but principled reforms to a criminal justice system which is steeped in the best of traditions but has also never stood still.

The nature of crime in contemporary society has changed. Criminal networks are ever more sophisticated, cases are more complicated, evidence can run to literally millions of digital pages—as noted in the Fisher review—and the pressures on judges, advocates, prosecutors and court staff are acute. Today, almost 81,000 cases are outstanding in the Crown Court—more than double the number in 2019. Nearly 24,000 have been waiting for more than a year and more than half of those involve violent or sexual offences.

Imagine being the victim of a serious sexual assault, finding the courage to come forward, going through the investigation, steeling yourself to stand in court and recount what happened and then, at the last moment, being told that your trial cannot go ahead. For some victims, the wait becomes intolerable and they understandably give up on the prospect of prosecution. Cases collapse and victims are denied justice. Defendants are denied the opportunity to clear their names and the guilty do not face the consequences of their crimes; they simply walk free. Other victims face the extraordinary prospect of waiting longer for justice than the convicted offender may ultimately spend in prison.

Justice delayed is justice denied. That phrase has been used a great deal in this debate and I am sure that it will be used again today, but it is the heart of our concern. Last year alone, the number of cases requiring a trial was nearly a quarter higher than in 2019. The conclusion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, was clear: we need investment, modernisation and, crucially, structural reform. This Government are acting on all three. Let me set them out in turn.

We have put record investment into the courts, including £287 million in court repairs and digital upgrades. We have recruited more judges and magistrates and have put record funding into criminal legal aid. The Government have removed the cap on Crown Court sitting days so that all available judicial capacity can be used to hear cases. We have also committed more than £550 million to support services over the remainder of this Parliament to help victims through the delays.

I turn to modernising. Working with the judiciary, we are improving how cases are listed. We are rolling out case co-ordinators for every Crown Court centre and investing in better video technology so that more hearings can take place remotely. However, we also need practical, proportionate, structural reform to deliver faster, fairer justice for the 21st century. The measures in this Bill are designed to ensure that court time is used proportionately to maintain the balance between victims and defendants, and to make it clear that the court is the decision-maker, not the defendant.

Central to that approach is a significant strengthening of our magistrates’ courts. Magistrates’ courts already deal with the overwhelming majority of criminal cases fairly and efficiently. Yet too many cases that could be resolved by magistrates are pushed into the Crown Court, adding to pressures on a Crown Court system that must also deal with murder, rape and the other most serious offences.

The Bill addresses this in three ways. First, it provides the power to extend magistrates’ court sentencing power to 18 or 24 months for offences that are triable either way. The Government’s intention, depending on when we get Royal Assent for the Bill, is to increase sentencing powers to 18 months later next year. This does not increase the maximum sentence for any offence. It simply allows appropriate cases to be concluded in the magistrates’ courts, which deal with these cases around four times faster than the Crown Court.

Secondly, the Bill changes who decides where some cases are heard. For “either way” offences, defendants will no longer have an automatic right to elect for Crown Court trial. Instead, magistrates and district judges sitting in the magistrates’ court will determine the appropriate venue, having regard to the seriousness and complexity of the case. Decisions about where cases are heard should rest with the courts, not with defendants, who may have an incentive to prolong proceedings in the hope that the case might eventually collapse. This will help ensure that valuable Crown Court time is reserved for cases that genuinely require it, but it will also ensure that all cases that can be heard by magistrates are heard in the magistrates’ court far sooner and more quickly than if they had joined the queue for the Crown Court.

Thirdly, the Bill reforms appeals from magistrates’ courts. At present, an appeal to the Crown Court requires a complete rehearing, even where the grounds for the challenge are weak. This places further demands on court time and can require victims and witnesses to relive their experiences unnecessarily. The Bill therefore introduces a permission stage to filter out appeals without sufficient merit while preserving the right to bring a proper challenge. We will also enable audio recording in all magistrates’ courts, providing a reliable record of proceedings.

These are ambitious reforms, but it is essential that we have the capacity to deliver them by investing in courts, certainly, but also in the magistracy itself. I am sure we will discuss capacity in the magistrates’ courts today and in later stages on the Bill, so I want to set out straightaway that we are on track to reach our target of having 21,000 magistrates in place by 2028-29, having recruited almost 1,500 new magistrates in the past six months alone. Alongside them, we are strengthening judicial capacity, boosting the ranks of our district judges, who have the expertise to hear more serious and complex cases in the magistrates’ courts. Last year, we recruited 50 new deputy district judges and have identified a reserve list of over 80 additional candidates whose appointments are now under way. Alongside this, recruitment is under way for 30 district judges, strengthening judicial capacity and giving us flexibility to tackle growing demand.

Finally, the Bill retains jury trials for almost all defendants facing trial in the Crown Court, while bringing forward a narrowly defined provision for “judge alone” trials in the longest and most complex fraud and financial cases. These exceptional trials can last for months, placing considerable burdens on jurors through prolonged absence from work, lost income and disruption to family life. The primary purpose of this measure is not to save court time but to protect ordinary citizens from the disproportionate demands of serving on juries on such lengthy and complex trials. It is also about ensuring that our justice system keeps pace with the changing nature of crime that I have described. As financial offending becomes increasingly complex, we must ensure that our courts are able to deal with these cases swiftly and effectively, now and in the future.

Some of the current problems are simply unfair. The burden of court delays is not shared equally. People from Black and mixed ethnicity backgrounds are more likely to be victims of crime, while defendants from minority ethnic backgrounds are also more likely to be remanded in custody before trial—a fact highlighted in the Lammy review of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Therefore, the Bill also includes a provision for an independent review of the impact of these reforms on defendants from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. The reviewer will be appointed within six months of the first reforms taking effect, with an initial report within 12 months and a full report within five years. Those findings will be published and laid before Parliament.

I emphasise again that the Bill is about far more than court capacity. It is about rebuilding a system that works better for everyone, perhaps especially by improving the experience of victims. For too long, victims of rape and sexual violence have faced not only delays, as I have described, but harmful assumptions and insinuations about how they should have behaved, how they should have responded, or what a victim is supposed to look like. The Bill therefore introduces important reforms to improve the way evidence is given and to make special measures easier to access, as recommended by the Law Commission. Alongside this, the Government have announced £23 million to improve the experience of victims of rape and serious sexual offences in court, including specialist courtrooms, better facilities and additional support. Each year, the witness intermediary scheme enables over 10,000 children and disabled witnesses to give evidence to the police and courts.

We are also committed to strengthening protections for children in family proceedings. The Bill will repeal the presumption of parental involvement from the Children Act 1989, ensuring that children’s safety and welfare continue to be the foremost concern of the courts. This month marks 12 years since the tragic death of Claire Throssell’s two sons, Jack and Paul. Indeed, today marks the anniversary of Jack’s death. I am sure noble Lords will join me in remembering them and in paying tribute to Claire Throssell, who has campaigned with extraordinary courage to ensure other children do not suffer as her sons did and are better protected from abusive parents.

Finally, I turn to the remaining measures in the Bill. First, our intention is to bring the leadership of tribunals in England and Wales, which until now has been separate, into the judicial structure headed by the Lady Chief Justice. The new structure will support more flexible working and deployment, as well as wider judicial career options, recruitment and morale. Secondly, changes to magistrates’ expenses rules will ensure that expenses reflect modern working life, compensating magistrates appropriately for the important work they do. Finally, a technical change will primarily preserve the unique status of the Old Bailey as the Central Criminal Court, to avoid confusion with the new Salisbury Square development set to open in the City of London next year.

I began my remarks by speaking about public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system: trust that when someone reports a crime the system will respond swiftly; trust that when a victim finds the courage to give evidence, the courts will be ready to hear them; and trust that when a defendant faces an allegation, they will receive a fair trial within a reasonable time. We are protecting the principles that have made our justice system respected across the world, while having the courage to change the practices that are preventing it working as it should in the 21st century. Our task is to deliver justice that is fast, fair and worthy of the public’s trust and of our reputation in the world—not simply to clear the backlog today but to rebuild a system capable of meeting the demands of tomorrow. That is the purpose of this Bill. I beg to move.

16:38

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister for his introduction to the Bill. I look forward to the contributions of the great legal minds we have across this Chamber. I am not a lawyer myself, but I hope that I can offer the common-sense perspective. I also look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stace. I am sure his expertise will be valuable to the House.

Before I address the content of the Bill, I want to acknowledge the backlog facing our court system and note that we appreciate the desire to provide victims, witnesses and defendants with justice in a timely manner. The statistics show 81,000 cases awaiting resolution in the Crown Court, of which nearly 24,000 have been waiting over a year. We absolutely agree with the Government that victims should not have to wait years for their cases to be heard, nor should defendants spend years awaiting the resolution of proceedings that determine their freedom. However, that does not mean that we agree on the reforms to the criminal justice system that have been set out in the Bill. There is a need to balance the efficiency of the court system with the fairness of the justice system. I do not believe that the Bill strikes that balance.

As currently drafted, the Bill is not the right way to reduce the court backlog. It is worth noting that the Bill we are presented with now represents a significant departure from the one that entered the other place eight months ago. The original Bill proposed a significant attack on jury trials; the ancient English right to be tried by a jury composed of your peers was not protected. I thank my right honourable friends for their tireless work in opposing these measures. I am grateful for their voices, alongside those of numerous experts, who were able to convince the Government to drop this clause. However, despite the removal of the most egregious clause, there remain serious problems throughout the Bill.

I turn to my concerns regarding the measures in the Bill that we have received here, as introduced by the Minister. We are particularly concerned by the removal of a defendant’s right to elect for a trial by jury for “either way” offences, the increased power proposed for magistrates’ courts, the removal of juries from complex and lengthy trials, the expansion of the definition of complex and lengthy cases through secondary legislation, and the removal of the presumption of parental involvement.

I first turn to the removal of the defendant’s right to elect for trial by jury in “either way” cases. The right to a jury trial is an ancient English right that dates back as far as the Magna Carta. If the Government have accepted that this right is valuable, they should remove this clause, as well as the previous Clause 3. Trial by a jury of your peers is an important safeguard in our criminal justice system, and one that people have immense trust in. By eroding this right, the Government are attacking a functional aspect of the system. Does the Minister have evidence that shows that this change to the system will not reduce public confidence?

I understand the Government’s desire to reduce the backlog of cases, but there is insufficient evidence to suggest that diverting cases away from the Crown Court will have such an effect. In fact, placing all these cases on the magistrates’ court is likely to have the effect of simply shifting the caseload from one place to another. Rather than causing a meaningful reduction in the backlog, this will increase the pressure on the already strained magistrates’ courts. Indeed, analysis from the Institute for Government notes that these proposals will increase the speed at which cases are heard in the Crown Court by only 1% or 2%, and the Government’s own assessment indicates that these measures will not take effect until 2028-29 at the earliest. These numbers highlight how little impact this would have on the victims and defendants facing these backlogs. It certainly does not seem a sensible trade-off to infringe upon the right to a trial by jury for this negligible reduction.

I turn next to my concerns regarding the extension of magistrates’ sentencing powers and changes to the arrangements for appealing their decisions. The Bill would increase the maximum custodial sentence available to magistrates’ courts for relevant “either way” cases, as well as replace the existing automatic right to appeal to the Crown Court with a permission-based process. Together, these changes represent a significant departure from the existing system.

Magistrates’ courts are undoubtedly important and we recognise their indispensable role in the administration of justice. Increasing their sentencing powers will allow them to deal with more serious cases, while requiring permission to appeal will add a further procedural hurdle for defendants. These proposals seem to rest on the misguided assumption that the magistrates’ courts have sufficient capacity to work through a proportion of the Crown Court backlog. What consultation have the Government undertaken on whether magistrates’ courts are prepared for this additional workload, and, if they are not prepared, what support will they be given? How will they monitor the changes to the appeals system on the number of appeals and the time taken to resolve them?

I turn to the provisions allowing certain complex and lengthy cases to be tried by a judge alone. Although certain cases can be demanding, this inconvenience cannot be the reason for the removal of juries. Indeed, in Jonathan Fisher’s fraud review, he sets out that the measures in the Bill send the “wrong message” about the seriousness of fraud cases and that juries are able to handle these cases perfectly well when they are “properly managed and presented”. What evidence do the Government have to suggest that this is the appropriate way to reduce the backlog?

As well as this, the Government are leaving the list of “complex or lengthy” cases open to amendment through secondary legislation, with the only exceptions being homicide offences and sexual offences. Schedule 1, which lists all the offences to which a judge-only trial applies, can be amended through secondary legislation. Although the Explanatory Notes suggest that this would be through the affirmative procedure, this is not evident in the Bill. That is highly concerning and leaves the potential for serious changes to be made through statutory instruments with far less parliamentary scrutiny. Fundamental changes to legislation should not be possible through secondary legislation. Delegated powers ought to be used for the implementation of technical provisions. But, as drafted, expanding the definition of what constitutes a “complex or lengthy” case seems significant.

The provisions that repeal the presumption of parental involvement under the Children Act 1989 are also of concern. Let me clarify that we wholeheartedly believe that the safety and welfare of the child must always be paramount. Courts should absolutely have the ability to respond and prevent contact where there is evidence of abuse or risk of harm. However, it is equally important to recognise the value of a safe and meaningful parental relationship.

The existing presumption allows a court to consider the individual circumstances of a child, but it starts from the position of recognition that parental involvement generally will benefit the child unless the opposite is shown. The Bill repeals this without providing any sort of replacement. The objective should be to strengthen the protection of children rather than simply removing the importance of safe parental involvement.

There are further provisions in the Bill that deserve careful scrutiny. Although we do not have time to list them all, we will, where necessary, seek to provide constructive amendments. Where there are measures that demonstrably improve the delivery of justice, we will support them. This legislation must be tested on its ability not only to decrease the backlog but to deliver justice in a fair manner. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

16:48

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches we welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his maiden speech. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, to the Conservative Front Bench. I too am not a lawyer. It is good to have another non-lawyer in these very legal debates.

The Courts and Tribunals Bill has been a long time coming to your Lordships’ House. My noble friend Lord Marks will focus on the changes in the courts system, and I will focus on the experience of victims in the Bill as we see it.

The Bill, as originally introduced in the Commons, created measures in line with the recommendations made in Part 1 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. They included the establishment of a Crown Court Bench division to hear lower-level cases without a jury. The Bill we are considering today has removed a large part of the proposed changes to cases without a jury. But the reasons for those proposals—how to clear a very large waiting list—remain.

I thank the Minister for sending us the factsheet on current problems in the system. That was extremely helpful. Statistics in September this year show that the Crown Court backlog stands at nearly 81,000, more than double what it was in 2019, even if it has reduced a bit. The figure from the magistrates’ courts is significantly worse. In June this year, there were 380,230 open cases. Can the Minister tell us how on earth the magistrates will be able to add cases that will now come from the Crown Court to this already massive list? I do not understand why we do not refer to the magistrates’ courts’ open cases lists as a backlog, because clearly it is.

The noble Lord, Lord Lemos, was right to say that justice delayed was justice denied. In the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrat justice spokeswoman, Jess Brown-Fuller MP, proposed that better use be made of court buildings to allow each courtroom to be used for two trial hearings a day: a morning hearing from 9 am till 1 pm and the second from 2 pm till 6 pm. Her proposal is based on pilots that were undertaken during the Covid era, when courts cleared an average of 3.5 trials per week, compared with fewer than one per week in the current courtroom system. Will the Minister consider her proposal?

Other key reforms need to be considered, including renegotiating transport contracts to ensure that defendants are delivered to court—and the dock—on time and cancelling real-terms cuts to the Ministry of Justice capital budget. The poor state of the courts is also a key factor in delays. We hear regularly about literal buckets being put into courts to catch leaks coming in from above. Another factor is the unavailability of advocates and interpreters, as the Rights of Women group has pointed out to your Lordships.

Above all, however, Liberal Democrats want to see victim-led intensive case management. There are some good proposals in Clauses 7 to 16 in relation to victims, picking up on the commissioner’s recommendations, but they are not universal. We like the restrictions on evidence or questions about complainants’ sexual history, and evidence about previous false complaints relating to sexual offence. What is needed is a fundamental change in approach to support anyone suffering this type of crime. In Committee, we will probe exactly how these proposals will work.

It is still frustrating that, no matter what Parliament says, the judiciary can continue to choose not to have full training for judges in both the criminal and family courts to ensure that victims get the support they need as they access the criminal justice system. I note that the new courts for rape and serious sexual offences, known as RASSO cases, will have training for the judiciary in trauma-informed and victim-led support throughout the process. I ask the Minister, therefore, why the same would not be true for other serious cases. That is needed because victims’ experience of the court system is just not consistent. Not everyone within the system is trained. Security staff on the door can push defendants and victims through security at the same time. Court staff can put a victim in a seat that happens to be next to the dock, so that they are sitting beside their alleged attacker. This is re-victimisation.

The Victims’ Commissioner brought six victims to meet a number of Peers a fortnight ago, and they told us of their own experiences in the court system. In that discussion, what happened to them was second to their experience once the whole system started to work. We heard from Emma—not her real name. She was stalked, and after her stalker broke through two doors of her home, he was arrested. Emma disclosed that he had been physically abusing her too, and she felt unsafe, even in her own home; but she had no idea how bad things were going to get, all in the court system.

The magistrates’ court proceedings lasted two and a half years. There were 34 adjournments. She said:

“A court date is not simply a date in a diary for a victim. You prepare yourself emotionally … You rearrange your life around it. You try to get yourself into the right frame of mind to attend and participate”.


That court decided that sentencing should go up to the Crown Court. Paperwork was delayed and special-measure arrangements were promised. Three years later, an appeal was heard and the case was overturned. During that appeal, material was put to her while she was giving evidence. She felt exposed, overwhelmed, underprepared and understandably let down when the appeal was granted.

Emma said the impact was profound. It had caused her to have dissociative seizures, which now affect her ability to work. Her general health has deteriorated, and each court process forced her to revisit what had happened to her originally. Emma and the other brave victims we heard from were not speaking just on their own account. They were speaking for all victims.

Women’s Aid and other victims’ organisations welcome the repeal of the legal presumption of parental involvement in family courts, as we do from these Benches. We disagree with the Conservatives on this because some perpetrators of domestic abuse manipulate the family justice system to further their abuse. It sits alongside invisible abuse. It has taken years to get coercive control taken seriously; I thank the previous Government for recognising it. But the abuse of the family courts by a limited number of parents is truly shocking. Since Women’s Aid began reporting on this issue, the legal presumption of involvement has cost the lives of 67 children, including Claire Throssell’s beloved sons Jack and Paul. She has headed a 12-year campaign to have the presumption repealed. I know that the Conservatives opposed this repeal in the Commons and spoke about parental entitlement to access, but this should not be about the parent. It should—no, must—always be about the safety of the children.

Finally, these Benches are concerned about Clauses 21 to 23, which are on powers to make “consequential amendments” and “transitional or saving provision”, and the power

“to state effect of provisions commencing Sentencing Code amendments”.

There is wide scope, in these three clauses, for Henry VIII powers that could substantially undo the changes that the Government have announced since the passage of the Bill and its arrival here in the Lords. We will lay probing amendments to make sure that that will not happen to quite the extent that we fear it may.

There are good elements of the Bill that we support, including the desire to repair the damage to our court system, but there are other parts that we believe do not go far enough. Through the passage of the Bill, we will lay probing amendments and discuss the issues with the Minister in the most positive way that we can.

16:57

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill for two principal reasons. The first is Clause 17, which brings the courts and tribunals under the leadership of the Lady Chief Justice. We cannot underestimate the importance of firm, single leadership and the long-held need by the judiciary for the reversal of the mistakes that were made in 2003, 2005 and 2006, when the leadership was split. I therefore welcome this change. We can already see the effect of this decision by what is happening in the tribunals. For example, there is a great increase in the number of disposals being made in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

Secondly and more importantly, I welcome the commitment to the structural reform to the criminal justice system that is being proposed. I have no doubt that structural reform is needed. Greater focus on good leadership, greater efficiency and, above all, greater resources will make a big difference, but they cannot on their own cure the problems so clearly identified by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, in his independent reports and in the update since then. In short, we would delude ourselves if we thought that structural change was not necessary. Change has been regularly carried out over the centuries of the history of our criminal justice system. We are at a time when structural change is again necessary. Our task in this House is therefore to subject these proposals to careful scrutiny so that we can be satisfied either that the Government have made the right choice on structural reform in this legislation or that we feel modifications need to be made.

There are three areas that I believe should be examined; I will take them in turn. First, there is the choice of the type of court to try the less serious cases that presently go to the Crown Court. This is not an easy question. The difficulty is shown by an examination of the options that have been considered. I am glad that trial by judge alone in the Crown Court was, rightly, abandoned by the Government.

Trial by judge and two magistrates was an intermediate type of court proposed by Lord Justice Auld as long ago as 2001, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, in his reports, and favoured with all the evidence clearly set out by the Times Crime and Justice Commission. I considered that the right solution in 2001, and everything that has happened since has strengthened my view that that was right. I very much hope that this is something that we can examine during the passage of the Bill through this House.

The other option is trial in the magistrates’ courts, either by three magistrates or—I emphasise this—by judge alone. With greater sentencing powers being given to the magistrates’ courts, what we have, in effect, is an increase in the compulsory jurisdiction of the magistrates’ courts.

Looking at those options, we also have to take into account the issues that have arisen about who is to make the choice of where the case is to be tried. More importantly, we have to look at the choice of the criteria to be used in making the decision as to where the case is to be heard, and the role of Parliament in setting the criteria and the way the choice is to be made. Should we, for example, reclassify offences such as those that are trialled in the magistrates’ courts, which is not what the Bill proposes? Should we retain the present system of “either way” offences, making the decision principally on the basis of the likely length of sentence, with other criteria taken into account? Are the criteria that should be taken into account clearly set out? And is account to be taken as to whether the trial is to be for three magistrates or judge alone?

I believe that our task is to look at this in some detail, but principally at how the allocation between the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court under the governance proposals is to be made. To fulfil our role, I believe that we need to know much more about the impact of the decisions on the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court, and much more about the criteria that are to govern the decision as to whether the case is to stay in the magistrates’ court or be transferred to the Crown Court. If it is to be retained in the magistrates’ court, we need to know whether there is to be any change in the position as to which cases are to be heard by a district judge—as that will be trial by judge alone—or by three magistrates. These are difficult issues that need our careful scrutiny.

Secondly, I turn to the question of appeals. I have no doubt that a system for appeals where there is no restriction on the right to appeal has rightly been abandoned across the entirety of our system elsewhere and in many other countries in the world. It is now the time to reform that in the interests of efficiency and of victims. The Bill is plainly right in principle in requiring a permission stage. However, we need to scrutinise this reform, about which there is so little detail as to how it is to work.

For example, as the grant of permission will depend on the decision of the judge reviewing the papers on the strength of the argument as to the safety of the conviction or the length of the sentence, what is to be done about improving the way that magistrates and district judges record their decisions? When will the provision of a transcript be properly made? We will also require the provision of an office system for this work. The Court of Appeal Criminal Division could not function without an office and I do not see how this reform can function without such an office. We have no details at all. Also, what is to be done by way of legal aid? Are defendants who are convicted to get the same right to legal aid for advice as they have in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division? All this will take time, and we need to know the timescale. This is a vital change on which too little attention has been focused.

I turn to the third aspect, which is trial of fraud and other complex cases. The way in which transactions are effective is almost invariably recorded in written or digital format. The issue in such cases is one of honesty. In complex transactions, it is my experience that the issue of honesty is best determined in the context of a full understanding of a business background. That is why there is so much to be said for the recommendation made by Lord Roskill as long ago as 1985 for a trial by judge and two lay members with business and financial expertise. That would be the ideal solution. In the absence of that, I think justice is better served by trial before a judge, who will have a better and fuller understanding of the business background.

17:05

[The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich]

My Lords, as a Christian, I believe that justice should be grounded in the recognition that all people, victim and perpetrator alike, possess an unyielding human dignity given to them by God. Today I will focus on how this Bill might serve to uphold that dignity for some of the most vulnerable who encounter our justice system. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester is unable to be here, but I know that she will follow this Bill closely and will take up these points in Committee.

I express my strong support for the measures in the Bill which would increase the threshold for admission of sexual behaviour evidence in criminal trials. This reform is long overdue. For survivors of sexual offences, the process of reporting and testifying can be deeply harrowing and retraumatising. In too many cases, when sexual offences are reported to the police, previous disclosures of rape and sexual violence are used as evidence of the survivor’s so-called bad character. There are many accounts of the ways in which, during trial, questions about survivors’ sexual history have been used to cast doubt on their credibility. I pay tribute to those who have had to endure such an ordeal.

Around 85% of rape survivors do not report the offence to the police. When those who did not report were asked why, the most common reasons were that they did not think the police could help, that they were embarrassed or that they thought that reporting would be humiliating. These statistics are alarming, but can we really be surprised by them when our justice system is permeated by myths of consent and fabrication?

We know that many survivors will never report to the police, but those who do must be given the confidence that they will be treated with dignity, compassion and fairness. The measures in this Bill, especially those which seek to dispel such myths, will go a long way towards achieving that aim. It is my hope that they will also help foster a culture in which all survivors feel able to come forward, confident that they will be taken seriously and their perpetrators will be held to account.

I am also pleased to see the Government’s focus on tackling the backlog of Crown Court cases, which sees survivors of rape waiting disproportionately lengthy times for their cases to be heard. However, this crisis must not be addressed at the expense of other minoritised communities. While the Government propose that more cases be heard by magistrates’ courts, the eligibility threshold for publicly funded representation there is significantly lower. Unrepresented defendants can suffer serious disadvantages in court, including a limited understanding of the charges they face. This is particularly concerning given the proposal to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers. If these plans are to go forward, they must be implemented with changes to these thresholds from the outset. Without clarity on this in the Bill, we risk embedding economic inequality into our justice system and limiting access to justice for those with the least means.

I am also concerned by the proposal to remove the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court. As youth justice cases are ordinarily presided over by magistrates, this would have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable young people. The God that I and other Christians worship is one of justice and of mercy. We can express that mercy by offering young people every opportunity at rehabilitation and the chance to turn their lives around. Restricting this right of appeal for children, alongside increased sentencing powers, may be a threat to one of the key safeguards against judicial error. It may serve not only to increase youth imprisonment unnecessarily but to further entrench the disadvantages that often draw children into crime.

Court backlogs are severe, but they have been exacerbated by decades of underinvestment. Addressing this issue by simply restricting the right to jury trials may serve only to erode trust in the system without addressing the underlying issues that have brought us to this breaking point. Women, older and racially minoritised defendants are more likely to opt for jury trial in a Crown Court. Taking away this right therefore affects some groups more than others—groups who are already more likely to experience disadvantage and whose confidence in the system’s fairness may already be fragile. We know that, in their journey through the justice system, defendants face countless deprivations of liberty before any verdict is reached. We should be cautious to take this fundamental choice away before the resolutions that can be attained through sustained funding have been properly explored.

To maintain trust, we should strive for a justice system where vulnerable people who disclose sexual violence can trust that they will be treated with compassion and believed, and people of lower economic means can trust that their income will not define their guilt. If young people are to be given the opportunity to grow into the kinds of citizens who can contribute meaningfully to their communities, they must trust that their communities are committed not only to accountability but to restoration, transformation, and the possibility of a better future. This kind of reform cannot be achieved by a Bill alone; it requires significant and sustained investment and a real commitment to upholding the dignity of all people.

17:11

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I spent 35 years at the criminal Bar as both a defender and a prosecutor, and then I spent three years as a Crown Court judge dealing with jury trials. From that, it is clear to me that our criminal courts are under pressure that is unlike anything I have seen in my professional career. From inside the system, every day it can be seen that delay is not just a question of statistics but a daily reality that shapes the experience of victims and defendants, and, increasingly, takes a toll on the judges, advocates and court staff who work tirelessly to keep the system functioning. This is not spoken about as much.

There is insufficient time in this debate to explore the recruitment and retention crisis at the criminal Bar, or its looming equivalent in the judiciary, but, in summary, it is contributed to by the working conditions created by the backlog, which puts pressure on the system to speed up throughput, sometimes at the expense of careful consideration of an individual case. That is not justice; it is administrative crisis management, and it is not good enough. We can therefore all probably agree that the Bill matters, but it may be less easy to agree on what to do about it.

What I say next is said with great affection for my own profession: lawyers have a tendency to regard procedural reform as the first sign of constitutional collapse; experience suggests otherwise. The history of criminal justice is a history of adaptation. The question is not whether change should occur, because change has always occurred; the question is whether it leaves the system fairer, more effective and better able to deliver justice. Some of the debate generated by the Bill has proceeded as though jury trial were the only fair means by which guilt or innocence can be determined. With respect, that has never been the position in England and Wales. The vast majority of criminal cases—usually some 90%—are and have always been dealt with by magistrates. I am a supporter of jury trial; it is one of the strengths of our system, but we have to be honest and realistic: it is expensive and time-consuming. That is precisely why, throughout our history, we have reserved it for cases Parliament regarded as sufficiently serious to justify that expenditure of time and resources.

However, what is meant by the most serious cases changes over time, and every Government redraw the line as to which cases require it. That is why we no longer use juries to try breathalyser cases, as we did in the 1970s. The system was adjusted so that drink-driving cases were dealt with by magistrates, and rightly so.

Whenever somebody suggests that only a jury can be trusted to determine guilt or innocence in a fair way, I find myself wondering what precisely it is that they are saying about magistrates. Lay magistrates—a majority—are members of the public, just like juries. They give their time voluntarily; they bring experience, judgment and common sense; and throughout my career, I saw them dealing conscientiously and fairly with difficult cases. Magistrates deserve recognition as a cornerstone of our system, not dismissal as a second-class form of justice.

There is an uncomfortable truth which we owe it to the public to acknowledge: at present, there are too many cases going to the Crown Court. We also have to recognise that delay does not only affect victims and innocent defendants; it also changes behaviour within the system. The question before us is not whether defendants deserve protection—of course they do—but protecting the innocent cannot be at the expense of allowing the guilty to play the system. Every Crown Court judge has encountered cases where one cannot help wondering whether a guilty plea owes as much to the attractions of delay as it does to the merits of the defence. A defendant may calculate that, by contesting the case, they can secure not merely this Christmas at home but perhaps the next one as well, and possibly even the one after that—and perhaps, if they are lucky, in the end the victim will just give up.

A justice system that rewards delay should not be surprised when delay becomes part of the strategy. There were certainly occasions during my time on the Bench when I looked at a case in the Crown Court and found myself asking, “What exactly is that case doing here?” We should trust our magistrates to decide where the justice of the case means that it should be tried—and we can trust them. Even in the system as it operates at the moment, the statistics show that magistrates often err on the side of caution by sending cases to the Crown Court where the eventual sentence was actually lower than the one the magistrates could have passed.

The Bill is not simply an exercise in reducing a backlog; it is an opportunity to address aspects of the criminal justice system that have required attention for years. Take appeals from the magistrates’ court. I have never really understood a process that effectively says, “You’ve had a trial before a properly constituted court. You didn’t like the outcome. So, now you can have another go in front of another court”. That may have made sense in the days when there was no accurate record of what had happened in the magistrates’ court. But in the 21st century, the recording and transcription of magistrates’ court proceedings can—and is—going to happen. So, only those cases where there is an arguable appeal should go ahead, and that is of course exactly what happens in every other court, including appeal from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal.

My concern about the current system of magistrates’ court appeals is not in fact principally that it is grossly inefficient—even though it is—but that it is also unfair. Behind many of those appeals is a victim: someone who thought that the process had finally ended with the conviction but who will now be required to relive the entire experience again, in all likelihood months, if not years, later. A proper appeals system is not about giving defendants a second bite at the cherry; it is about the convicting the guilty while acquitting the innocent.

This Government have rightly assessed that to improve the criminal justice system requires investment and efficiency, but the modelling makes it absolutely clear that alone these are not enough; there must also be sensible modernisation of our procedures. The question before us is not whether reform is risk-free—it never is. The real danger is not that we change too much, but that we change too little, too late. After a lifetime practising in the criminal courts, I have concluded that the public care far less about preserving our procedures than they do about actually receiving justice in a timely way. So, our duty is to preserve what is best in the system, reform what is not, and leave behind a criminal justice system that works better than the one we inherited.

17:19

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a non-practising barrister. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, even though I feel unable to follow her conclusions.

In 2020, Mr David Lammy, who was the ministerial author of the proposals in this Bill, said:

“Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea”.


He has also said that jury trials are

“one of the big contributions that flow out of Magna Carta”.

He was right on the first two points and almost right on the third—and here I have to disagree with my noble friend Lord Ashcombe. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, who cannot be here today, has shown in his magisterial recent Selden lecture on the history of jury trial, trial by jury actually began just a little while after Magna Carta when Pope Innocent III banned trial by ordeal in November 1215, after which, following a writ of King Henry III in 1219, travelling judges began to use a local jury to determine guilt or innocence. Whether it began in 1215 or 1219, jury trial has long been part of our national history.

The traditions which make a country what it is are like a tapestry—one that has many threads. If you start to remove those threads, the tapestry begins to unravel and becomes threadbare. The traditions start to dissolve and the essential soul of the nation, bit by bit, begins to get lost. Jury trials are a part of that tapestry. The principle that we are entitled, if accused of a serious offence, to be tried by our fellow citizens, has become deeply embedded in our national psyche.

While I welcome the removal of the original Clause 3 of the Bill, I view with great concern the proposals to curtail the right to trial by jury, some of which go beyond the recommendations of the Leveson review. I am particularly concerned by the provisions of Clause 1, which would remove the current right of an adult defendant charged with an “either way” offence to elect for a Crown Court trial. What are these “either way” offences? They include theft and shoplifting, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, fraud and drug offences. Quite apart from the obvious consequences of a conviction for these offences, the reputational damage could be even more severe. That is not something which a court would be entitled, under the provisions of the Bill, to take into account when deciding the appropriate venue for trial. I also have concerns, among other provisions, about Clause 3, which removes the right to jury trial in long and complex cases, and Clause 6, which removes the automatic right to appeal to the Crown Court against conviction or sentence in the magistrates’ courts.

As we have heard from the noble Baroness and previous speakers, I recognise that not all your Lordships share in these concerns, but there is one provision in this Bill which I hope all Members of this House would unite in opposing. That is the provision in Part 2 of new Schedule 3ZA which would enable the Secretary of State to add by order—by order, my Lords—to the number of offences which come within the scope of the new schedule, meaning the offences in respect of which jury trial would no longer be available.

As the Government’s own Explanatory Notes put it, this would enable the Secretary of State to

“add offences which are not related to fraud or financial crime to the Schedule”.

He could add any offence, by order, to the schedule—this is monstrous. Your Lordships have long been accustomed to what have been termed, not always accurately, Henry VIII clauses—but this is not a Henry VIII clause; this is a Joseph Stalin clause. It is an absolute outrage, and it should not be allowed to remain in the Bill, whatever the fate of some of the other provisions to which I have referred. There is much scope for your Lordships to improve the Bill, and I hope we make the most of this opportunity.

17:25

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, when the Minister started this debate, he said that our court and judicial system has never stood still. For many of us in this Chamber, we feel not only that it has not stood still but that it has been going backwards in recent years. That is very much the backdrop to today’s debate. We have had several years of what, to a non-lawyer, appears to be managed decline—some of it benign, some of it unthinking and some of it, if you are uncharitable, marginally malign. As ever, it has had unforeseen consequences.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, for her speech, because it is a cardinal example of the rule of “physician, heal thyself”. She knows what she is talking about.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I will focus on the people at the bottom of this problem: the victims. While all areas are under strain, as the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said, the strain on the participants in the system—the people responsible for administering it—must occasionally be almost unbearable. But the experience of victims is profound and traumatic. For many of them, what they feel they are experiencing is not a million miles away from what the noble Lord, Lord Howard, referred to as trial by ordeal, because that is precisely what it feels like.

There are three asks for the Bill that those of us concerned for victims would hope to see answered. The first is to tackle the backlog, and the second is to improve the victim’s experience of the court process. Those of us present at the briefing that the Victims’ Commissioner gave us a few weeks ago were horrified—particularly those of us who are not lawyers—by what we heard. I was particularly horrified to learn of a process that is known as the pooling of rape cases, which is when a group of cases involving rape are put together in a category where it is deemed more than likely that the person who has been raped will withdraw from the process because of the trauma of going through it. The fact that this syndrome is present and known about is an indictment of our system.

The third ask is to strengthen accountability and oversight. I would like the Government to think seriously about finding a way to use victims’ experiences as a core measurement of court performance and effectiveness as we go forward. There must be a way of doing it that is meaningful and live.

There are clearly some potential red flags in the Bill. Jury trials are highly trusted by many minority groups, whose members, as they look around at the court and judicial system, may not see a great many people in it who look, sound and feel like them. For that reason, when they look at many juries, they see more people who they feel understand them and come from their communities—they know some of the trials and tribulations they have been through. That is often particularly the case for women.

I feel that magistrates are in danger of being overwhelmed if we are not very careful in how we decide to place new burdens on them. We are recruiting a large number of new magistrates, which is good news, but I feel that many of them are in danger of being thrown in at the deep end.

I will briefly return to the individual whom the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was talking about earlier: the young lady called Emma, who spoke very movingly to us in the Victims’ Commissioner’s presentation. I will briefly add some of what she told us. This is not her real name, and she was clearly being extraordinarily brave, and was finding it very difficult to talk to us. She read from it—obviously, it was very carefully constructed—and it is extraordinarily moving. She said:

“There are consequences I continue to live with long after a hearing has ended. The court process has required me to revisit what happened, prepare to give evidence, wait through delays and face further uncertainty. Throughout that time, I have also been trying to manage my health and rebuild some sense of normality. There have been times when simply functioning day to day has been difficult. I have kept going because I wanted what happened to me to be taken seriously. I wanted to engage with the justice system and see the process through. But I have had to do that while my health has deteriorated and while I have struggled with the physical consequences of trauma. I do not think that it should take a person reaching this level of physical distress before the impact of a criminal case is properly understood … I am not a case number. I am a person whose health has been profoundly affected, whose body has been through repeated physical crises and who is still trying to recover from what has happened. I wanted justice. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to be able to move forward with my life. I am still trying to do these things”.


To summarise: the success of the Bill should be judged ultimately by whether victims can access justice within a reasonable timeframe, through a process that supports their participation and confidence, without fundamental trauma or delay. Now, since nothing sits not between me and the cocktail hour, but between me and the noble Lord, Lord Stace, I will sit down.

17:31

[Lord Stace (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a profound honour to address your Lordships for the first time. I am incredibly grateful to noble Lords across the House for their warm and generous welcome. I thank all the staff of the House for making my arrival so enjoyable: the doorkeepers, the clerks, the catering staff, Black Rod and Garter Principal King of Arms. Their help and humour have carried me through to this moment. To my supporters for my introduction, the Leader of the House and my noble friend Lord Timpson, as well as the Chief Whip, my noble friend Lord Kennedy, I echo publicly what I have said privately: thank you for your kindness, your friendship and your encouragement, and for reminding me that my imposter syndrome, including at this particular moment in time, is perfectly normal—perhaps even desirable, if that means we are humbled by the importance of this place.

I am keen to address certain aspects of the Bill, but first I want to share the journey that led me here, which I hope will give your Lordships some clarity on how I will spend my time here in this House. I strongly believe that where we come from matters, because it shapes what we believe is possible. I grew up in Brighton, or, as the Housing and Communities Secretary called it recently, “Manchester Southeast”—seagulls, summer crowds, crashing waves on pebble shores, and, most autumns, party conferences; a local comprehensive, a tough school and a loving family.

I was the first of my family to go to university. At Hull University, I learned a lot from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, about the importance of politics, and that it can and should be an honourable profession. Apparently, he also knew a thing or two about the constitution, and I now wish that I had paid slightly closer attention to those lectures. After I graduated, it was wonderful to see my mum Irene go through the Open University, and today my wife Emma works for the Open University.

I pause to commend Michael Young, the late Lord Young of Dartington, and Jennie Lee, the late Baroness Lee of Asheridge, and all the other pioneers of the fantastic, life-changing Open University. Michael Young also founded Which?, where I was deputy chief executive, before running the Australian equivalent, called CHOICE. No matter where in the world, no matter which sector, I have tried to improve the lives of those who are most vulnerable: something which I know stemmed from my upbringing.

From an early age, I knew that my mum, Irene, and my dad, Tim, were a political odd couple: Irene, at times, only a cigarette paper’s width from being a communist; Tim, a devout Thatcherite.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

Oh!

[Lord Stace (Lab)]

Tim may well be listening and may well be embarrassed or perhaps emboldened by that cheer from the Benches opposite.

For me, over breakfast, there was a choice to be made: should I read the Daily Mail or the Morning Star? Of course, I read both. Both parents in their own way were passionate about improving the lives of others, and I learned that you can argue about means while agreeing about ends, without falling out too much. It is why I have always enjoyed good relations with people with different ideas, perspectives and politics, and I hope to continue that here.

Our personal histories shape us in ways we welcome, and in ways we do not. I have spent my career working with people whose circumstances narrowed their options and squandered their talents: young people without work, people in prison, people whose livelihoods are being destroyed by war or climate change. The people I encounter, whether in Kyiv or Coventry, are not weak people; often they have huge inner strength. But they lack the conditions to allow them to flourish. Many feel that our system is something done to them, not something they belong to. Changing those conditions, building those platforms so that everyone can thrive, is how I want to spend my time here.

I have worked for much of my career supporting young people. I was the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, now the King’s Trust—His Majesty’s charities are truly life-changing—and I have set up three charities to help young people. Today, I lead on global impact for Howden Insurance Group. In 18 months, we have helped to create a public/private philanthropic solution called Humanity Insured, which is already supporting 2.6 million people, including smallholders across Africa and Asia. That is just in the last 18 months. As an insurance business, we are also helping to make the circumstances possible for the reconstruction of Ukraine: giving confidence to investors to pump billions into schools, hospitals and homes; rebuilding lives and livelihoods.

From the breakfast table to world affairs, I have come to realise that solutions to the greatest challenges our world faces seldom lie with one sector or one immutable ideology over another. From the rehabilitation of prisoners to tackling youth unemployment to rebuilding Ukraine, I have learned that the answers lie in partnership and pragmatism, innovation and inspiration.

I will now turn to the Bill before us. I thank my noble friend the Minister and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, for arranging a prior briefing on the Bill. It is so important that we tackle the inhumanity of a system that allows victims to wait for many years for a court listing and a resolution. As my noble friend the Minister said, justice delayed is justice denied, and the Bill is a welcome step in bringing about greater efficiencies. But I know my noble friend the Minister will agree with me that we must also develop a more ambitious, systems-wide approach to reform; otherwise, we risk shifting the problem, not solving it. Given my background, it may not surprise your Lordships to hear that I am an advocate for doing everything we can to prevent people offending or reoffending in the first place, which, in itself, will relieve pressure on the court system.

At the King’s Trust, it was our mission to help young people find their purpose, to provide hope and to seek to divert them from what, for some, can be an inevitable pathway to prison. As chair of the Prison Reform Trust, I see our brilliant work in helping to create the environment where prisoners can leave prison as productive and successful members of society.

As our Prime Minister said recently:

“You don’t make Britain safer by leaving a younger generation without hope, stuck at home, looking at screens. You do it by giving young people hope again”.


Alan Milburn’s review is a generational moment to make our society happier and healthier, with hope for the next generation. If we do that, our criminal justice system will be more efficient and fair.

At this stage of my speech, I am reminded of advice to speech-makers attributed to Franklin D Roosevelt:

“Be brief, be sincere, be seated”.


The House mandates that I be brief. I have been, and will always be, sincere. And now, I shall be seated.

17:40

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on a very thoughtful and personal maiden speech. He is a friend who I have known for over a quarter of a century. Both of our families lived and grew up in south London and in south London Labour politics.

As we have heard, my noble friend Lord Stace brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to your Lordships’ House. He did not do justice to the work that he did when he was CEO of the Prince’s Trust, now the King’s Trust. In its 40-year history, the then Prince’s Trust helped and supported over 1 million people. As the new CEO, my noble friend Lord Stace—or Nick, as he was then—set an ambitious target of helping 1 million more over the next decade. He also did not touch on his time as the CEO of Saga travel—known to some of us in your Lordships’ House. When Nick became CEO, he was under the age of 50 and had to get special dispensation to attend and travel on some of the Saga cruises, which I am sure he thoroughly enjoyed. Finally, what an apt Bill for him to make a maiden speech on. As chair of the Prison Reform Trust, my noble friend brings an understanding and compassion that will be greatly appreciated and respected across your Lordships’ House. I welcome Nick, my noble friend Lord Stace.

I turn to the Second Reading. I welcome the Government’s determination to confront the crisis in our courts. Behind every delayed hearing are people whose lives cannot move forward. I want to approach the Bill through the lens of social justice. The question is not simply how many cases can move through the system; it is whether someone without money, influence or knowledge of the law can obtain justice, and whether victims can secure a hearing before delay exhausts their confidence. Those are not competing objectives: a fair justice system must and can deliver both.

The scale of the challenge is stark. Ministry of Justice figures show that, at the end of June, there were over 80,000 open Crown Court cases and over 380,000 open cases in magistrates’ courts. For a victim, delay can mean repeated preparation for a hearing that does not happen. For an innocent defendant, it can mean a livelihood, a reputation and family life suspended. Delay is therefore not merely an administrative failure; it is a social justice issue. That is why doing nothing cannot be the answer and why I welcome the Government’s willingness to listen, and their decision not to proceed with the proposed Crown Court Bench division changes.

I welcome the provisions concerning evidence in sexual offence proceedings and support for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. These recognise that access to justice means more than just entering a courtroom; it means being able to give evidence safely and effectively, while preserving a fair trial.

The remaining structural reforms require careful examination. Removing the adult defendant’s right to elect a Crown Court trial, increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers and introducing permissions required for appeal must be considered together. Their combined effect matters more than any provision viewed in isolation. My concern is practical. If more serious decisions are taken in magistrates’ courts, with greater consequences for liberty, what safeguards will ensure that those least equipped to navigate the system are not disadvantaged?

First, we need credible capacity before additional responsibilities are transferred. The magistrates’ courts are not empty reservoirs into which Crown Court work can simply be poured. Their open caseload is already at record levels. The Justice Committee’s chair put it plainly:

“A clear plan to ensure there is capacity to meet increased demand is vital”.


Will my noble friend the Minister published a plan covering magistrates, district judges, legal advisers, administrative staff and court facilities before these changes take effect? As someone whose working life has included representing working people, I add that reform must be designed with the workforce, not simply delivered to it. The people preparing files, supporting witnesses and keeping hearings running know where time is lost. Their experience, and that of their trade unions, should help inform implementation.

Secondly, access to an appeal must remain meaningful. A permission requirement may look like a modest procedural change, but, for someone with limited literacy or a learning disability or no effective legal assistance, explaining why a decision may be wrong can in itself be a formidable barrier. Will the Minister explain what practical support will be available, particularly for the most vulnerable?

Efficiency should mean resolving cases correctly, not making errors harder to challenge. I welcome the independent review, examining the differences in treatment or outcomes by race and socioeconomic status. That is not special treatment; it is a test of whether equal treatment exists in practice. However, a review must be capable of prompting action. Will there be a clear baseline, published findings and a commitment to explain how any adverse effects will be addressed? Parliament should not discover years later that a reform intending to improve justice has deepened inequality.

Legislation cannot substitute for making the existing system work. The latest statistics show that one-quarter of Crown Court trials listed to start do not start—they did not proceed as scheduled and require another listing. Better case preparation, reliable prison transport, functioning technology and properly maintained buildings are not glamorous reforms, but they matter enormously to the people waiting outside the courtroom.

I support the ambition to deliver swifter justice. My test is whether these reforms improve the experiences of those with the least power: victims waiting to be heard, defendants entitled to fairness and families living with uncertainty. Let us reduce delay without reducing confidence, strengthen capacity before transferring responsibilities, and make equality before the law a practical reality. That should be the social justice purpose of the Bill.

17:49

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, for two reasons. The first is that I agree with everything he said about his noble friend Lord Stace, who has just made what the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, described as a thoughtful maiden speech. I am not in the least bit surprised, knowing what I know about the noble Lord. I expect the House to benefit from his contributions on many future occasions and I welcome him to his place. I also agree with the practical approach that the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, applied to this Bill and the measures that it seeks to introduce to deal with some of the plain and obvious problems that the criminal justice system faces.

Before I come to the substance of the Bill, perhaps I may be forgiven for making what I suspect might in other places be called a pleading point. The amendment to be advanced later this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has so far been ignored by the Government. This is a Bill of huge constitutional, financial and practical importance for all of us as citizens and for the institutions of justice. If I may say so, it has been treated by the Government in the other place with considerable disdain. A lot of the Bill before us has not been considered at all, or not adequately, in the other place, so it ought to go back there to be reconsidered before it comes to our House. If that is not going to happen, and I suspect it will not, the Minister ought to have the ability to respond—I was going to say to condescend to us to respond—to the points that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, makes in his amendment.

Far too much of this Bill is ill considered and unconsidered, and it does us no service when we have to do the work that the Commons should have done. I hope that, when we come to deal with Committee, Report and Third Reading, we will not shrink from applying serious thought, skill and expertise to the detail of this Bill, because it has been woefully considered in the other place. I do not mind which view Members of this House take on the merits and various aspects of the Bill one way or the other, but I do care that, if we are to produce legislation, it should be produced properly and well thought through.

That said, given the controversial nature of some of the provisions of the Bill, there is not really time other than to point at one or two questions which need to be thought about very carefully in Committee. I will pick up one point—I do so with some diffidence, since he is sitting right in front of me—that my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne made. He chided our noble friend on the Front Bench for placing too much stress on Magna Carta as the origin of the jury system. He was entirely right to do so, but he then relied on Pope Innocent III as being the founder of the modern jury system.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

It was King Edward III.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Well, we may now be getting to a point of agreement; we should be looking at the six statutes of Edward III, because that is where a proper interpretation of Clause 39 of Magna Carta comes. That said—gosh, can I get to the church by way of the moon?—what is more important in the development of our jury system is not what happened in the Middle Ages but what happened in the post-Civil War period with the Mead and Penn case, the development of the Bill of Rights and universal education, the increase in the economic power of our country, the removal of power from the Crown and the Barons to the wider population and the involvement of that wider population in our justice system through the jury. It is important that we recognise the democratic input that the jury system provides in our criminal justice system.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Howard that it is also important to remind ourselves what the previous Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy, did in introducing this whole subject in the first place. I have some sympathy for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, who has twice now been asked to carry out inquiries and write reports for two different Governments, and has not found that they have met universal approval by the politicians. I am afraid that that is the fate of report writers. I have had that problem myself, but I have borne it with such fortitude as I have been able to muster.

The serious point, however, is this. Mr Lammy asked himself the wrong question and then came up with the wrong answer to the wrong question. The question he ought to have asked himself is: what, in practical terms —I look across to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol—can best be done to reduce the backlog of cases in our criminal justice system? Bear in mind that only 10% of all criminal cases get before the Crown Court. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, said, the magistrates carry out the bulk of our criminal justice work. They are to be praised and supported, their work is to be reinforced with adequate resources and decent premises, and so on and so forth. However, I suspect you are not going to reduce the backlog, which now, we are told, stands at 81,000 cases, by reducing the ability of the citizen to get a trial in front of a jury. Certainly the non-violent cases will be pushed back well beyond 2029 or 2030 at the current rate.

Let us think of one or two practical points beyond those that the noble Lord mentioned a moment ago. I confess that I used to sit as a Crown Court recorder. As a civil law practitioner, it may well be wondered by people such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, what on earth I was doing in a criminal court.

I see that the great god of time has already enabled me to curtail my remarks, when I know that the whole House is absolutely itching to hear what I have to say. The time will come in Committee when we will have to dismantle this Bill and reconstruct it in such a way that we can reduce the backlog but without reducing access to justice. Unless we pay attention to the state of the buildings and the ability of the delivery service to get people from remand to the Crown Court in time without having enough judges, part-time or full-time, or enough court staff, all the things that the Government think that this reform will do will be lost, because the same mechanical problems will still exist.

17:58

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, which I seem to do quite often. It is also a great pleasure to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, and to congratulate him on his maiden speech. I note that he sat down almost exactly on eight minutes, which is a very good augur for the future. Because it is my first opportunity to do so, I should also like to welcome the Minister to the House, and particularly to the Government Front Bench. He may recall that some 20 years ago or so, when I was head of the CPS, he was one of our non-executive directors and, I may say, one of our very best. He will also recall that in those days we both had somewhat darker hair, although, rather annoyingly, he seems to have retained more of his.

This is my first opportunity to welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson of Liverpool, whom I am delighted to see in his place. I am sure that his contributions to the House will be erudite and penetrating, although that does not guarantee that we will always agree.

It is important to acknowledge that we are dealing with the consequences of a funding crisis. That is too often forgotten. Governments in recent years have made the choice not to invest in criminal justice. The direct result has been the backlogs that we now see. The Justice Minister in the other place claimed recently in the media that even if there was not a funding crisis and the backlogs that we are confronting, the Government would proceed with these reforms anyway as a matter of principle. I found her unpersuasive on that point. We are dealing with the results of a funding crisis.

My own service, the CPS, in the not-so-distant past lost some 30% of its budget and some 30% of its front-line prosecutors. Imagine if the National Health Service lost 30% of its front-line doctors. Courts went dark and barristers, because of the collapse in legal aid, left the criminal Bar in droves. That is the situation that we are now confronting. Covid did not help, but successive Governments have used it as a shield for problems which pre-existed it.

Others noble Lords have dealt with matters of principle. I accept that people can have fair trials in front of judges without juries. That is obvious. All over the world, people have fair trials in front of judges. In our commercial courts, people have fair trials in front of judges. However, I want to address the Minister on a more practical issue: will the magistrates’ courts be able to cope with the massive influx of work which this Bill will direct towards them?

With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, there were some things about his report that I disagreed with. We debated these disagreements publicly on a podcast. I took the view of the Institute for Government that the reforms that he was proposing would save so little time in the Crown Court that they were not worth the number of jury trials that would be lost as a result. However, his report had one singular merit—it had many merits—that I want to refer to now: that most of the cases removed from juries under his proposals would be presided over instead by a Crown Court judge and two magistrates. The Government’s new proposals, resiling from his report, were trailed in the press as the Government saving jury trial. The new Prime Minister, during his by-election campaign, expressed his great attraction for jury trial and rather implied that the Leveson report would be dead as a result of his affection for it, but that has not happened. The Bill before the House does not succeed in creating any diminution in the right to jury trial. That may be necessary for all the reasons which noble Lords have expressed.

However, I seriously question whether the magistrates’ court, in its current condition, is in a fit state, even with the additions of magistrates which have been described, even with the additions of new district judges that have been described, could deal with this influx of work. At the moment, trials that are conducted in magistrates’ courts are of very minor matters, rarely lasting longer than a day. That will change. Magistrates will keep within their jurisdiction cases which will last for two, three, four or perhaps five days. It is very easy for a lay magistrate to get a day a month off work to do their duty in the magistrates’ court or perhaps even two days a month, but persuading an employer that they should have three or four days—which might stretch into five or six days because the trial takes longer than expected—is a very different kettle of fish.

Journalism is not always terribly accurate, but I found this piece of journalism quite persuasive. A couple of months ago, maybe a little longer, the Times sent a couple of journalists down to a magistrates’ court in the south-east of England. They found a situation of absolute chaos. There were not enough magistrates, barristers not turning up, prisoners not being delivered and witnesses not turning up. If the magistrates are now to deal with two, three, four or five day-long cases, with more serious cases, with more powers of sentencing, we will need many more magistrates, many more district judges, probably more buildings and certainly a more efficient means of delivering prisoners to the courts.

I am not in principle opposed to courts making allocation decisions. In most of the fair trial world, it is not the defendant who decides where he or she should be tried. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will correct me if I am wrong that in Scotland it is largely the prosecutor who makes that decision. I am not against that. However, I am opposed to a situation which gives courts the right to decide allocation but pays no account to the resources of the courts in question. I urge the Minister to tell the House what modelling has been done to convince the Government that the magistrates’ courts can take on this level of work and how much money will be necessary to enable them to do so. How many more lay magistrates will we need and how many more district judges?

I have never understood why we do not allow defendants to elect trial before judge alone if that is what they wish. I understand that the Government feel that such a proposal would be inconsistent with their new idea that allocation should be a matter for the judges, but if defendants want to be tried by judges, they should be allowed to make that decision. I urge the Government to reconsider their position on that.

18:07

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, and a pleasure to see my noble and learned friend Lord Leveson in his richly deserved place. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on a humble, humane and incredibly promising maiden speech. I declare interests as a council member of the cross-party law reform charity Justice and as a member of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, where the spirit of the late and learned Lord Judge is always in the room.

I thank Justice for expressing so well, and the new Prime Minister for listening to, profound and widespread concerns about the earlier version of this Bill. The most obvious reason for the current crisis in our criminal justice system is years of savage cuts—bipartisan cuts by politicians who were quick to compete in law and order rhetoric, legislation being cheap and talk even cheaper, but they rendered tough words hollow by chronic underinvestment. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, made the point about “what if 30% of the doctors were off”. Attempting to speed up justice by a dilution of due process is oxymoronic indeed.

I join the Bar Council in welcoming, among other innovations, the Government’s pledge to establish specialist rape and sexual offences courts as a means of achieving swifter and better justice without dispensing with jury trials.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about parental responsibility. I note the expert testimony from the group Rights of Women on the confidence that women caught up in the system place in juries. Its short briefing gives lie to any zero-sum game between victims and defendants, and I hope we might bear that in mind.

I will explain why I think jury trials are so important in serious cases. First, the democratic effect, referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, of trial by one’s peers—I do not mean addressing your Lordships’ House; sometimes that is a trial, but not always—is a crucial participatory and legitimising factor of our system and society. Can we say it goes back about 100 years? Will that work, or will I be called out by the scholars of Middle Ages history on the Conservative Benches? Let us say about 100 years. Without jury trials in difficult and polarised times, it will feel to many that one class sits in permanent judgment over others—that does not mean that I am with my new noble friend’s mother in reading the Morning Star. By contrast, how wonderful that lay people may not only participate in democracy but play such a crucial part in delivering the rule of law on which that democracy is built. The statistics on women and people of colour having more confidence in juries add another crucial dimension to this.

Secondly, juries protect our judiciary from the opprobrium, sadly often stoked in both old and new media, that would surely come with high-profile acquittals in particular. The “enemies of the people”-type jibe and consequential threats to our precious referees would be only compounded in the context of findings related to criminal guilt or the lack thereof.

Thirdly, for me at least, perhaps just as importantly, juries provide a priceless final safety valve against oppressive laws and prosecutions. Some might find such safeguards irritating, but I for one think it important that there is the possibility of acquittal in a whistleblowing case involving official secrets or a protest case involving disproportionate policing contrary to the conscience of ordinary citizens. This is not about the Government, authorities and statute book just of today but over the years, and crucially, about how things might be if our politics were to take an authoritarian turn. Judges and magistrates would find it difficult or impossible to acquit in the face of tightly drawn statutes, regardless of their consciences.

I maintain residual concerns about the dilutions to the right to jury trial that continue in the Bill: the removal of the right to elect in “either way” offences; the increased or likely increased sentencing powers for magistrates; the removal of the right to appeal from magistrates; the restriction of jury trial in complex and lengthy cases, which may be extremely serious for the accused, and the building of the slippery slope towards every case involving computer, DNA or other technical or forensic evidence, especially via secondary legislation. I do not need to invoke dictators of this century or previous centuries —I hope noble Lords will understand the point.

Parliament is meant to be the least imperfect means of representing the people in the context of legislation and administration; how bizarre if it were complicit in removing their vital role in the adjudication of serious criminal liability. Being an internationalist and European in the context of human rights should not come with a callous disregard for an ancient homegrown right cherished by our people and admired across the world.

I look forward to our further deliberations and remind my noble friends in government that to listen is a dynamic and a continuous verb.

18:15

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow those eloquent remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I will focus mine on the proposed removal of the statutory presumption of parental involvement as set out in the Bill. As your Lordships know, unsafe child contact has led to a number of terrible tragedies. I want to associate myself with the remarks made by the Minister at the beginning about the tireless and courageous work of Claire Throssell, who lost both her sons in the most tragic of circumstances.

I hope that we can all agree across the House that when thinking about child contact, we are broadly trying to achieve two things: first, that the contact arrangements for children decided by the family courts protect those children and the resident parent from harm; and secondly, that children should retain contact with both parents where it is safe to do so. My concern is that this Bill alone will not achieve either the former or the latter goal. It is not clear how the Government will protect children from harm without losing sight of the problem that the statutory presumption of parental involvement sought to address in the first place—that too many children lose contact with a parent after separation. We need to have confidence that the Government’s approach will deliver both safe contact and long-term involvement where appropriate.

The intention of Parliament, expressed by the Children’s Minister in the other place in 2013, was that

“having both parents involved in the child’s life is the right course where it is safe and in the child’s best interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/2/13; col. 56.]

The question now is whether the presumption contributed to unsafe decisions, whether it led to longer-term safe contact with the non-resident parent and what will best protect children in its place. Sadly, we do not have data that allows us to come to a firm view on any of these points. The Ministry of Justice’s 2025 review raises serious concerns, rightly, about unsafe contact and the pressure towards parental involvement, but it is not conclusive about the contribution of the statutory presumption. It states:

“The apparent high incidence of orders where there were indicators of risk suggested that the courts were ordering direct contact between children and parents who have caused or pose a risk of harm … Evidence around judicial decision-making suggested that the presumption was not routinely referenced by judges and magistrates when they made decisions about contested child arrangements orders. When it was referenced, the presumption was highlighted as only one of a number of factors the court must consider when making child arrangements orders”.


The report notes that the dataset used was at best patchy and the judgment sample was heavily concentrated in just one court.

The review also stated:

“The lack of a clear evidence base about the long-term outcomes of different forms of involvement ordered by the court was concerning”.


That same data desert on outcomes for children following their involvement in family court proceedings remains.

Today, I urge the Government that we must not legislate for unproven changes for children without a plan to test and evaluate those changes. These limitations do not diminish in any way the seriousness of the evidence that children have been exposed to unsafe contact, but the review itself acknowledges that the presumption is not the driving force behind the courts’ “no stone unturned” culture. What gives the Minister confidence that the repeal will change the unsafe decisions identified, and what further changes in practice are needed alongside it? If I may, I will suggest some options that I hope he can comment on when he closes, or perhaps he will write to me.

First, surely it is critical that such a determination must be based on the social work assessment, where one is required. Secondly, the consistent and proper use of practice direction 12J must be widely encouraged. Thirdly, there should be a proportionate use of fact-finding hearings. The removal of the presumption must be accompanied by leadership and culture change within the family justice system that prioritises these things and does not assume that the removal of a legislative provision will result in safety for children, because we all know that it will not. We also know that it is far harder to achieve that culture change than it is to amend a piece of legislation.

I am optimistic about what the new child-focused courts can achieve, but their success will depend on the quality of implementation. As an example, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and I were privileged to visit the specialist domestic abuse court in Westminster and witness the work of the Standing Together partnership, which really highlighted the importance of high-quality implementation. Although the family court and the criminal court models are, of course, different, the importance of specialist expertise is common to both. Will the Minister therefore set out the plan for training, funding and supporting the specialist domestic abuse services on which the child-focused court model depends? How will that competence be assessed, and who will be accountable where that specialist support is not available? How will that provision enable or otherwise the promised 40-day timescale for the filing of welfare assessments in the child-focused courts?

Finally, I urge the Government to establish a baseline before repeal takes effect, and commit to an independent evaluation reporting to Parliament on children’s safety, their experience of proceedings, and whether safe and beneficial relationships can be sustained. We need to know more than just what orders the court makes; we need to know what happens to the children who are affected by them.

18:22

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the characteristically clear and persuasive speech by the noble Baroness. I also want to say how much I enjoyed the eloquent, moving and wise speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stace. We have much to look forward to in the future from his contributions to this House. While I am at it, may I say that I am looking forward to the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Leveson? He and I go back a long way: 55 years ago we started appearing against one another in quite a lot of pretty knockabout cases, many of them tried by juries up in the north-west. We enjoyed every minute of it, I think, and I am sure we will enjoy being together in your Lordships’ House.

I have had the good fortune of appearing before juries in hundreds of cases over the decades. I have loved every minute of it—well, almost every minute of it. I respect the attention and integrity of juries, and their sense of justice. In the eyes of a jury, every case is a story, and they judge life’s stories—sometimes, unfortunately, life’s horror stories. However, the system is not perfect. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, for example, was set up largely to deal with cases where there had been injustices before juries. The jury system is vital; it works, but it is not set in stone.

One of the things that has not changed in the English and Welsh jury system is the number of jurors we have—the apostolic number, as it is sometimes called. But let us look at some of our sister jurisdictions with the same common law background, or at least a hybrid, similar background—that is a reference to Scotland. In the Isle of Man, for example, I have addressed a jury of seven in a long fraud case. Scotland has juries of 15. If we look at the system we have, which again, has sisters in Australia and Canada, and look up the changes there have been in the jury systems in those countries, we see that, although they are very much trying cases as we do, many of the cases that were heard before Australian and Canadian courts have been removed from juries, for exactly the kinds of reasons we are talking about on this Bill.

Of course, juries were required in some civil cases when I started at the Bar. The removal of juries was regarded as the end of the world as we knew it in relation to some of those actions—libel actions, for example—but that has proved not to be the case. We have not suffered a crisis of injustice where juries have been removed. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, for whom I have an enormous admiration, that if the tapestry has some tears in it, we can repair it by some fairly small darning around the edges.

In a previous debate, a Labour Member of this House, who I will not name, referred to the rather undistinguished fact that my first jury trial was not defending a TV star on a shoplifting case but was actually a breathalyser case for an incident that occurred outside Birkenhead public library. Breathalyser cases were tried by jury from 1967 until 1988. If we were to say to barristers and solicitors now, “Let’s put breathalysers in front of a jury”, they would say we were mad.

Indeed, from looking at the history of various crimes we see that low-value criminal damage cases—now up to £5,000 damage—generally do not go before juries; nor do common assault and battery, and a large number of quite important administrative cases. In my view, we are simply adjusting the system. We in this place make new crimes—triable by jury, quite a lot of them—and we have to make space in the jury system for those crimes. It is perfectly reasonable to place them before magistrates.

However, I have some words about the extending of magistrates’ jurisdictions, which I hope the Minister, who has been very helpful in meeting us in relation to the Bill, will attend to. First, although he spoke of successful recruitment of magistrates recently, there is an awful long way to go to find enough magistrates of the right quality, with the right sort of experience and the right kind of judgment to do all the new cases they will be trying. Secondly, we need to ensure that they are given effective, high-quality training. Thirdly, we need to ensure that there is commitment from a large proportion of them. It will not be satisfactory if a group of magistrates are seen to be trying all the former “either way” cases in their court because they happen to be available, do not work, have more time, or have a particularly sympathetic employer. I suggest to the Minister—I think this is intended to be covered in Clause 18—that payment should be made to magistrates who are replacing jurors, for example if there is a case of more than two days. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said earlier, some of those cases could go on for up to five days or more.

Next, I am afraid I am going to refer to a case. It is very important that, in accordance with the case of R v Civil Service Appeal Board, ex parte Cunningham, 1992, provision of sound and concise reasons should be available in every case. The Crown Court will not be able to decide whether permission should be given for an appeal—I support adding a permission requirement—if it does not see cogent reasons from the magistrates. That will take some time and some training. It will also require that every magistrates’ court should have a really competent clerk or magistrates’ legal adviser in front of it to help if it has any legal problems with its cases.

Further, juries are not always the best choice. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Macdonald’s suggestion that we should consider allowing people to elect trial by judge alone. I can think of a large number of cases that I have done—I single out some historic sexual abuse cases—where I would have advised my client that he, and it is usually he, would have a better chance of a fair trial in front of a judge alone, with a lot of the emotion removed from the case.

I can give as an analogy, and it is a very loose analogy, non-jury trials in Northern Ireland, where the most recent available figures show an acquittal rate before a judge alone of 28.7% compared with an acquittal rate before a jury of 21.8%. We need to take such facts into account in determining whether what is advised in the Bill is wise. I believe it is, in general, but we will no doubt be able to desiccate the Bill to ensure that that wisdom is of the highest order.

18:31

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I always love following the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and hearing about his exploits. The story about judges’ acquittal rates is perhaps because they are deeply misogynistic—but I do not know. At the start, the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, talked about there being a lot of great legal minds in the Chamber. I am sure there are, but clearly I am not one of them. However, I have quite a strong sense of fairness and justice, and therefore some concerns about the Bill. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stace, for not hearing his maiden speech, but I promise to read it in Hansard and give him feedback tomorrow. I am sure he would love to hear it.

I move to the Bill. Nobody disputes that 14 years of Conservative underfunding have left our Crown Courts with an appalling backlog and that victims are paying the price. The Government say that they want to get justice moving; of course I support that, but I would like to see a fix for the problems that stop courts hearing cases. The Bill is moving around who gets to hear them and taking away some of the safeguards that protect defendants. I feel that is the wrong approach. The Government have rightly dropped their proposal to remove jury trials for less serious cases in the Crown Court, but keeping thousands of cases in magistrates’ courts, without a choice, is still a restriction on jury trials, and the Government have still not shown that they will solve the backlog.

We need to ask a simple question: why are cases not getting to court on time and what would make a difference? The Government expect their proposals to move about 25,000 cases a year away from the Crown Court, but where are those cases going? The court system already has a huge backlog, fewer magistrates than it had a decade ago and shortages of legal advisers. The organisation Justice has warned that there is insufficient evidence that magistrates’ courts can cope with this extra work, so why are the Government pressing ahead? Moving cases between courts does not make the problems disappear, and removing some of the right to jury trials does not magically make a case straightforward or ensure that a hearing can go ahead.

The Government’s proposals also risk leaving more defendants without legal aid. People who might have had a lawyer in the Crown Court could end up representing themselves in the magistrates’ courts, even when they face the possibility of prison. That is massively unfair. It can also mean longer, more complicated hearings, and the accused cross-examining victims on cases such as assault. The Government are chasing efficiency savings in the wrong places while risking changes that could undermine them and our justice system.

On the right of appeal, Justice has highlighted how often appeals against magistrates’ decisions succeed. These appeals are a safeguard against wrongful convictions and wrong sentences. Making people seek permission to appeal, often without a lawyer to help them, risks shutting people out of justice.

If there is a risk that these changes will make an already difficult experience of the justice system even worse for people who are vulnerable or marginalised, we should examine that properly before going ahead. You cannot always put things right after someone has been denied a fair hearing.

What about the age and background of magistrates and who is able to volunteer during the week? The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, explained this very clearly. If the Government are serious about clearing the backlog, they need to deal with what is actually going wrong. Trials are delayed because witnesses are unavailable, defendants are not brought to court, and court buildings and technology need investment. There are shortages across the criminal legal workforce, and legal aid must be sufficient to ensure that people can get proper representation. These problems are not solved by taking away a jury or making an appeal harder; they are solved by making sure that hearings go ahead, that courts have the staff and facilities they need, and that cases are properly prepared. Not much of that is in the Bill.

I support the new measures for witnesses, but I cannot support provisions that remove the right to elect a jury trial, restrict the right of appeal and expand magistrates’ sentencing powers. I also cannot support the measure in the Bill to allow the Secretary of State to add further offences to the list for judge-only trials through secondary legislation. That means that a future Government could extend the restriction on jury trials even more, without having to bring forward primary legislation for Parliament to debate.

I will press the Government to explain how they intend to address the real causes of delay and to provide a properly funded plan for courts expected to take on more work. They were right to rethink that part of the Bill, but they should now look again at the rest.

I am also worried about the bigger picture here. I did not expect to spend my time having to fight to defend basic civil liberties against this Government, but here we are, arguing about jury trials while the Government expand curbs to protesting, facial recognition surveillance and restrictions on people seeking asylum. Taken together, they give the state more power over people and take away some of the safeguards that are supposed to protect us from the misuse of power. It is often minorities, protesters and people who challenge those in authority who are most exposed to those consequences. We have only just repealed the Vagrancy Act 1824, which grouped the poor and the homeless together with criminals. That is how we saw them then. I dread the justice system getting harder for people to access and harder on the people who need to access it.

18:37

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on a textbook, excellent maiden speech. I hope we will hear much more from him.

I have two interests to declare. I practised at the criminal Bar for 40 years, but I am now long retired; and, despite my warnings about the way in which the criminal justice system was deteriorating through chronic underfunding, my elder daughter defiantly ploughed on to be a practising criminal barrister on the Western Circuit.

It is surely an irony that the two major achievements of the 1945 Labour Government were the health service and giving people without funds access to justice through legal aid. The first consumes more and more revenue; the second has been starved of it to the point of near collapse. Of course, the Government have realised what has gone wrong: 380,000 cases are waiting in the magistrates’ courts and, as we have heard, 81,000 in the Crown Court. There are victims of many sorts—not just the complainants waiting for trials but the wrongly accused. Public confidence is being eroded and our system of criminal justice is seriously damaged.

Just how bad has it become? One circuit leader—it is fair to say that this was three years ago—was asked to suggest one thing that would make things better. He said, “Yes, a bucket to put under the leak in my courtroom ceiling”. I have not made that up. Courts in valuable locations have been sold off and very little money has been spent on the court estate. The result has been breakdowns and closures. Courtrooms have been closed through a lack of judges or recorders and revenue restrictions on the number of permitted days. Over some years, legal aid has been so severely restricted and reduced that no young barrister who wants to make a half-decent living chooses a criminal practice. So few have done so that, on occasions, my daughter—either prosecuting or defending—goes to court to find yet another adjournment, because there is simply no one available to take the opposing brief.

It is not just the barristers who are in short supply. There are so few court clerks that many court centres, on occasion far apart, have had to share one or find one remotely. There is a shortage of interpreters because the rates paid do not compete with more lucrative fields. On a court sitting day, whatever that means—you might think it is a full day, but very often it is not, because the judge trying a case with a jury has to fit something in at 10 am and maybe even something at 2 pm, which can run on because there is no other judge to hear it—the jury involved in the trial are sitting in a waiting room for all that time until it has finished. Prison vans, because of the inadequate contracts, routinely delay trials because they do not bring prisoners to court in time. With these delays, postponements and adjournments, the waiting lists have grown longer and longer.

There are measures in the Bill that deserve support, especially those drawn from part 2 of the report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, and from the Law Commission. There are also, as the Minister said at the beginning, things that the Government have already started to do that are having an effect and—let us hope—look as though they are beginning to stabilise the Crown Court waiting lists: more sitting days, reopening courts and legal aid to encourage more people to enter the criminal Bar and to train more magistrates. The magistrates’ court lists are, as we have heard, already hopelessly overloaded as it is.

I am glad and relieved that the Government have stepped back from their earlier, shocking, wider position on the removal of jury trials, but the Bill as it stands needs some more radical pruning. In making changes to cut the waiting lists, the one thing that we surely do not want to do is further damage public confidence in the criminal justice system. Two particular aspects of the Bill would do that.

First, both research and experience show, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, that women and girls, especially, and Black and minority communities place confidence in the present right to be tried by a jury—particularly in serious cases—or, in other words, to be tried by a group of people with a range of experiences, some of whom may understand their condition better than a single, usually male and white, judge. Your case may seem minor to others, but for you a conviction may destroy your job, marriage, family, home and life. That right should be automatic and retained.

Secondly, if you are tried today in a magistrates’ court and are wrongly convicted—which happens, especially as many of the accused are not legally represented—you want to know that you have the right to have a rehearing in the Crown Court. The Post Office workers who were wrongly convicted in the magistrates’ court were almost all sentenced to less than two years. Under this Bill, they would have had no automatic right to a Crown Court hearing. Yet, and this is perhaps the most significant point, the figures from June this year show that 56% of such appeals succeed. Magistrates’ courts should surely be for swift justice for low-level crimes, not a tipping ground for Crown Court overflow cases.

That is where we are. What is the answer? First, look at those Crown Courts that have eliminated their backlog—we can find out their names; Liverpool is certainly one, and there are others—and do what they are doing, which is essentially much better and more efficient case management, countrywide. Secondly, we need more courtrooms, more sitting days, more judges, proper resources and full court days, not requiring one judge to do the work of two because it is cheaper. Finally, we need incentives to plead guilty at the very earliest stages, more use of the so-called Goodyear directions—where judges are able to give realistic indications of the sentence in the event of a guilty plea—reviews of cases in the waiting list and the removal of those no longer in the public interest, and, of course, as has been said, the increased use of technology to reduce case management hearings using up court time.

Forty years in practice have taught me that, although the result is not always right, jury trial is the best and fairest system by which to determine guilt or innocence. It is surely about trusting the people—which, if you believe in democracy and freedom, is what good government does.

18:45

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and to say at once that I largely agree with everything she said. Clearly, something must be done about the unacceptable backlog in the Crown Courts, but what? As she just said, what is the answer? Does this Bill get the balance right?

I will address only one point: the removal of the right to elect jury trial in “either way” offences. That is the removal of a right that currently exists. It leaves the mode of trial to the discretion of the magistrates without, as far as one can see, any appeal as to how that discretion is to be exercised in a particular case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, we need to know a lot more about how this is supposed to work and what the impact will be. I understand, and the Minister will put me right if I have it wrong, that this proposal goes together with the increase of sentencing powers of magistrates to 18 months. The general idea is that the magistrates will follow the allocation guidelines of the Sentencing Council. In other words, they will decide allocation according to the expected length of the possible sentence; if it is under 18 months, the case will stay in the magistrates’ court.

There is, as I have just said, no appeal from the magistrates’ decision as far as one can see. Many will have reservations about this increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers. But among the questions are whether the right to a jury should be determined on a case-by-case basis rather than set by Parliament on the basis of a very clear classification of particular offences or criteria set out in statute. Should the length of sentence be the only consideration? Should a discretion based on guidelines set by a third party, however respected—here, the Sentencing Council—be a substitute for rules clearly defined by Parliament?

The impact statement says that this measure and changes in the sentencing powers would remove about 25,000 cases a year from the Crown Court—that is about 30% of annual receipts—and save 5,500 jury trials. But that is about the number of jury trials that take place each year, so a very substantial reduction in jury trials is envisaged. Can the Minister explain the basis of these figures in the impact statement and, following observations by other noble Lords, what work has been done to establish that the magistrates’ courts can deal with this substantial increase in their caseload? I shall come back to that point in a moment.

More generally, and in common with other noble Lords who have spoken, some of us greatly value public participation in the justice system—the idea that it is citizens themselves who are administering justice and that justice is not something that comes down from higher beings to the lower echelons. Any diminution of that is to be regretted and requires justification, for the reasons given by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

As has been particularly mentioned, there is the situation of the ethnic minorities, and the view—very correctly expressed by David Lammy himself in his famous Lammy Review—that the jury system is the only part of the criminal justice system that is fully trusted by the ethnic minorities. I welcome, of course, the Minister’s suggestion of some sort of review of this aspect, but if one is going to risk a diminution of ethnic minorities’ confidence in our justice system, one is very much playing with fire.

More generally—and these are points that have already been made—I have not heard it suggested that the jury system itself has been a significant contributor to delays in the Crown Court. Rather, as the reports of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, emphasise, the Crown Court is and has been, for reasons that have been explained—including underinvestment, however regrettable that may have been—highly inefficient. Even today, we are given to understand that 25% of all criminal trials are ineffective: the prison van does not turn up; the papers have been served too late; the counsel is unavailable; the interpreter missed the train; the witness is missing; and so forth. One is left with the impression that trial by jury is being emasculated because of efficiency failures elsewhere in the system, and that is a cause of great concern.

By contrast, as has already been said by several noble Lords, the backlog in the magistrates’ court is rising; the shortage of legal advisers is acute; legal aid is less available in the magistrates’ court and the legal aid rates are much lower, risking more unrepresented defendants. The magistrates, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, emphasised, have great difficulty in trying any cases that are of a more complex kind, particularly cases that go over beyond the day or will last for a few hours longer than the average. That is going to place the magistrates’ courts in great difficulty. I pay tribute to our lay magistracy, but I share the fears of other noble Lords that we are in danger of overwhelming them by this approach that we are adopting.

So what is to be done? I suggest a twin track: let us implement as rapidly as possible the extensive reforms proposed in detail by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, including the national listing framework, the unlimited sitting days, which are already having an impact, and the various other suggestions made by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so as to make the whole system much more efficient and joined-up, including the police and the CPS.

At the same time, perhaps we should consider a proposal to move a block of lesser offences, to be defined by Parliament, into the magistrates’ court, as also originally proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. In my view, constitutionally it falls to Parliament to decide who does or does not qualify for jury trial. In principle, on an issue as fundamental as jury trial, that decision should be taken by Parliament and not left to the discretion of the magistrates, however conscientious and hard-working they may be.

18:53

[Lord Leveson of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the criminal justice system is in crisis. The police, the CPS, the defence community, the courts, prisons and probation all have different priorities and different financial pressures. The appointment of a new Second Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice is a welcome attempt to try to ensure that all those involved have a common direction and work together. On top, I recognise that the judiciary has the unenviable task of trying to maintain the balance between the prosecution and the defence, and ensure fairness for all. Prison vans may be late, but that may be a consequence of remand prisoners not being housed because of pressures on prison cells in a prison near to their court.

Although I will come to deal with the crisis, the rationalisation of criminal justice is indeed a principled objective, unconnected to the backlog of cases. Reference is frequently made to the unalienable rights of trial by jury to decide the facts, but the impressive lecture—to which the noble Lord, Lord Howard, referred—given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, last week to the Selden Society, utterly demolishes this argument. He noted that, in 1751, the average trial over four days took about 30 minutes. There was no choice of type of trial until 1847. Property ownership was a requirement of jury service until after 1965, and that meant that 89% of jurors until then were men.

When I started at the Bar in 1970, two trials a day was not unusual—occasionally against the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—but what is the position now? The gravity of trials for sexual offending, for violence and for organised crime is much greater. Complexity, along with protective measures for victims and defendants, has dramatically increased their length. Communications data, body-worn video, CCTV, data generally, scientific evidence including DNA have all changed prosecutions, as have the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, disclosure of unused material, special measures, intermediaries and interpreters—the list goes on.

What can be done? I could not seek to summarise my independent review before your Lordships. It is based, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned, on over 55 years’ involvement in criminal justice, of which for 18 years I was involved in the judicial management of criminal cases. Seldom has my homework been marked by so many in such a public forum. At its core, however, is what I consider to be an undeniable truth: that to be effective and to cope with the challenges of crime, its prosecution and justice in the 21st century, the component parts of the system need increased funding, structural reform and increased efficiency. In my view, with great respect to noble Lords, it is a fantasy to believe that more money and improved efficiency will solve the problem. We have been trying to make it more efficient for years and years. Trial processes must evolve to fit modern circumstances.

On top of that, we must consider the position in relation to the backlog or number of outstanding cases. My reviews were published in July 2025 and February of this year. Given the opposition to change, of which I have heard a great deal this afternoon, you would imagine that every part of the system would be straining to improve efficiency and to demonstrate that structural change was not necessary. From April, the start of the period covering the most recent statistics, there has been no cap on sitting days, so you might have expected a great improvement. In fact, the system has gone backwards. I do not for one moment seek to rely simply on one set of figures, but they illuminate the problem.

At the end of June 2026, as your Lordships have heard, there were 80,829 open cases—double that in 2019 —and 392 cases more than at the end of March. It is argued that 392 is a small increase, but in that three-month period receipts fell by 7%; that is to say, there were 7% fewer cases sent to the Crown Court for trial. Disposals were down 4%; that means 4% fewer cases left the system. Receipts have been decreasing since the middle of 2024, but the backlog grows. All the indicators are going the wrong way.

Worse still, median waiting times have increased. Almost 24,000 cases have been waiting for a year or more for trial, and more than half are for violent or sexual offences. The number is 22% higher than the previous year. Some cities are better, but, in London, cases are being listed for 2030. This is grossly unfair to victims, who need to be able to move on with their lives but are caught in a time warp from which they cannot escape except by withdrawing, which a number do. Witnesses are required to recall the events of years past. What an indictment of the state we have reached.

I was required to consider longer-term options for Crown Court reform to reduce demand and retain more cases in the lower courts. I suggested a raft of structural proposals. In relation to some, the Government have gone further than I recommended, such as on magistrates’ sentencing powers and on removing the right to elect, as opposed to the reclassification to summary offences of some triable either way. In relation to others, they have not been taken forward. This is for the Government and Parliament to consider and determine. I have been clear that, although the package of money and structural reform is not a pick and mix, I was not suggesting a slavish commitment to what I recommended. As a result, however, I am not in a position to speak of the impact of the proposals in the legislation because they are not my proposals. Given that it does not address the large volume of cases awaiting trial, I am apprehensive about whether it is enough. Further, the reduction in cases entering the system is unlikely to be reproduced, as the Government rightly wish to focus on public safety and, in particular, violence against women and girls.

Victims and witnesses, and indeed defendants who wish to move on with their lives, are human beings who require consideration. In that regard, I pay great tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Stace, whose humanity shone out in his maiden speech. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, whose interest in offenders is particularly well known.

It is worth noting that, in 2014, 8% of cases triable either way elected trial by jury. In 2022, it was 17%, because those who wish to play the system rather like the idea of having their trial deferred to 2030.

I end with two simple questions. Putting to one side the demands of the outstanding cases, in our modern times, with the plethora of evidence lengthening every trial, if not this, then what? If not now, then when?

19:02

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is rather intimidating following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, who gave such a compelling and insightful description of the crisis at the heart of criminal justice, but, put quite simply, no matter how bad that crisis is, rolling back jury trials cannot be the solution. In fact, many of us were relieved that the Government listened to the huge outcry against the earlier widespread removal of the jury trial, but if the Prime Minister has given an inch, for which I am a little grateful, forgive me for not gushing in gratitude.

I say this because so many of my Labour friends have told me that the attack on juries has been halted by Andy Burnham. That is just not true. This Bill continues an assault on juries, by removing a defendant’s right to choose a Crown Court trial for “either way” offences. That is not nothing. It means that sexual offences, violence and dishonesty can be treated as summary justice, like parking offences, with no right to appeal. Magistrates’ roles have been completely rewritten, now with expanded sentencing powers to lock up their fellow citizens for up to two years. I see this only as a recipe for miscarriages of justice. The Bar Council calls it a dangerous experiment.

Surely our elected colleagues in the other place would never have nodded through such a dangerous experiment without a comprehensive parliamentary kerfuffle about what is in this Bill. Sadly not. In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I make the complaint that the Report stage in the other place was allotted only 2.5 hours to consider dozens of new government amendments, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, referred to. Given that the Hansard Society considers those changes as fundamentally recasting the Bill’s purpose, that puts real moral pressure on this House to carefully consider whether the Bill is fit for purpose.

The Law Society urges us to judge the Bill by asking whether it will help break the cycle of crisis management or simply shift the problems from one overstretched part of the system to another. It seems to me to mirror how early release to tackle prison overcrowding has created havoc in the Probation Service and put the public at risk. Now we threaten a perfect storm in the magistrates’ courts, which have their own backlog. People have described how their workload has increased by 65% in the past three years and so on, but the Bill is offering them a poisoned chalice, is it not? It is telling people who might be considering being a magistrate or who are a magistrate that they can now lock up more people for longer, assess all the evidence and mitigating factors, write legal explanations and so on, and replace the jury. Does the Minister have any evidence that magistrates who donate their public service want or are attracted to these new burdens? Is it not changing the service completely?

One could have some sympathy with Ministers for harbouring a mistaken belief that removing increasing numbers of jury trials could save time, but it is telling that juries were, and still are, one of the key targets of action, rather than greater urgency in tackling the numerous avoidable inefficiencies and mismanagement that we have heard so eloquently explained.

I worry that the Government seem at ease with sacrificing fundamental rights to patch-up their own administrative failures. Perhaps the Minister can explain why the Government rejected any time-limited sunset clause that would at least ensure that this curtailing of jury trial rights would end once, or if, the court backlog was cleared, as was proposed in the other place. Instead, the Minister, Sarah Sackman KC, justified the erosion of jury rights as part of a “lasting improvement” in the operation of a modernised, fairer justice system. Can the Minister clarify whether the official position is that less use of juries will be fairer? It is hard not to agree with Judge Rivlin, whose recent paper on this Bill states:

“I believe the enormous, scandalous backlog of cases has become an ‘opportunity’–some might say, an ‘excuse’–to recycle a long-held antipathy to jury trial”.


It is that implicit antipathy that worries me, particularly about Clause 3. It contains a prejudice that juries are just not up to the job of dealing with complex fraud cases. In case the public find that insulting, the Minister today justified relieving juries of that onerous burden by saying that having to sit on juries for too long is bad for their welfare and their family life. That was insulting in itself, but this bout of kindness towards the public’s well-being might be more convincing if it was not attached to a part of the Bill in which the Secretary of State, outrageously, has conferred on themselves the power to add to the list of complex offences without parliamentary veto. That was passionately opposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and I agree. It is completely anti-democratic to do that.

What is more, the inference that some issues are much better dealt with by judge-only trials, full of clever experts and specialists, not only indicates a disdain for the public’s capacity or intelligence but gives up on the principle of open justice by abandoning the obligation to present cases in an understandable, intelligible way for the judge, jury, defendants and victims, as well as for the media and the public, as is part of the democratic agreement. As Jonathan Fisher KC explains,

“Trying fraud without a jury risks the perception of opacity or special treatment”.


He worries that it could,

“feed the narrative that powerful defendants are judged behind closed professional doors”.

It seems unfathomable that, at this of all times, when there is existential distrust in the establishment and a widespread belief that there is unfair two-tier justice, some members of the establishment are trying to dismantle the one trusted norm of criminal justice, the right to be judged by your peers, and the one civic obligation that millions embrace despite the discomfort or the inconvenience, jury service. Those 12 randomly selected ordinary people with 12 different lifetimes of experience and knowledge create 12 chances for a lone voice to speak up and say, “Wait! Something is not right here”. That crucial voice has historically prevented miscarriages of justice, seen through the lies and denials of perpetrators, however respectable, and checked state overreach. There are no nodding heads or voting fodder there. Juries embody fresh eyes, disinterested questioning and the virtues of persuasion, deliberation and common sense pursuing truth. To be honest, we could do with a lot more of it, not least in Westminster.

Finally, I am very torn on Clause 16 and the plans to remove the law of presumption in relation to parental contact. It has been extremely well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. We are told that removing this presumption sends a clear signal, but to who? I am not keen on using legislation for PR messaging purposes.

I was also brought up short by a quote I read from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, who said:

“Being a parent is a privilege, not a right. The only right that matters is a child’s right to safety”.


Surely a privilege is something that the state grants and can take away. Is the state saying that it owns parents’ rights? Actually, parents do have rights. I fear this is state overreach that risks making family courts ever more antagonistic. It is an attack on family rights. I hope the review that has been planned in the Bill will extend itself to Clause 16, because a lot of answers are needed there.

19:11

[Lord Jabbar (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on his wonderful maiden speech. Having given my own maiden speech only two weeks ago, I remember the relief that he must be feeling now having done it.

I welcome the Bill and, in particular, the Government’s determination to tackle the very serious problem of delay in our criminal courts. I approach this issue from the perspective of someone who has spent his professional life assisting people caught within the criminal justice systems, particularly across the Commonwealth, in jurisdictions in the Caribbean, east Africa and south-east Asia.

I declare my interest as a director of the Death Penalty Project, an international legal organisation that represents individuals in criminal and constitutional matters within the Commonwealth. In that work, I have seen what delay means for the people who depend on those systems—defendants whose lives and futures have remained uncertain while criminal proceedings have continued around them. That experience has taught me that delay is not simply a question of the efficient administration of the courts; it is fundamentally a question of access to justice and, ultimately, the right to a fair trial.

Of course, defendants are not alone in bearing the consequences of delay. We all recognise that victims and their families wait for justice, and that witnesses wait to give evidence. Families on all sides can find their lives placed on hold, and delay can undermine wider public confidence in the administration of justice. My experience is principally that of assisting defendants, and this is the perspective from which I wish to make my contribution to this debate.

The scale of the problem in the UK is stark. As many have said today, Ministry of Justice statistics at the end of June 2026 show the Crown Court case load reaching a record high of over 80,000—more than double the pre-Covid level. The magistrates’ courts’ case load was just above 380,000, with more than 20,000 cases open for a year or longer. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referenced, this is what we describe, in reality, as the backlog.

Current estimates indicate that, in some cases, trials may not take place until 2030—an unimaginable timeframe but a reality—and this does not even take into account appeals and further reviews. These are troubling numbers, but they are not simply numbers. Behind them are people whose lives are being placed on hold while the system struggles to deliver justice. It is unacceptable.

I will draw on three reflections from my experience across the Commonwealth. The first is delay as a human cost. The years spent waiting for criminal proceedings to conclude are years of people’s lives. Time is not neutral; it impacts on everybody. For a defendant, the passage of time can have consequences that go directly to the fairness of those proceedings. Witnesses become harder to locate, memories fade and circumstances change. Evidence may be difficult to obtain or test. All this can affect not just the experience of justice but the ability of a court to determine a case fairly.

My work involved assisting people who have faced the death penalty, some of whom spent many years on remand waiting for trial. I do not equate those cases with the problems confronting us here and the courts in the UK, but they have taught me one important lesson: the passage of time can itself become a profound part of a person’s experience of the justice system and, ultimately, the final outcome, so doing nothing is not an option. The Government are right to confront this problem.

My second reflection is this: access to court is not necessarily the same as access to justice. We can make a justice system faster, but faster does not necessarily mean fairer. For a defendant, real access to justice requires proper legal advice and representation, and the practical ability to understand the proceedings, participate effectively and enforce one’s rights. For example, the Justice Committee’s work in its report, Access to Justice: Legal Aid, gives us an important warning. It found that the number of active criminal duty solicitors had fallen by a quarter since 2017, and that only 7% were under the age of 35, meaning an ever-ageing cohort.

These are just some of the issues that threaten the operation of the justice system in England and Wales. Such concerns have also been made with representations by the Criminal Bar Association, the Bar Council and the Law Society. Even the most efficient court process cannot work properly if there are too few lawyers able to advise and represent the people passing through it. For defendants, effective legal representation is central to ensuring due process, protecting their rights and securing the possibility of a fair trial. If we make it faster to reach court but harder for someone to participate effectively once they get there, have we really improved access to justice?

I also agree with my noble friend Lord McNicol and welcome the Bill’s provision for an independent review of whether these reforms create or exacerbate differences in treatment or outcomes between defendants of different racial groups and different socioeconomic statuses. We know from robust empirical studies carried out the world over that impact is never equal. As we seek to make the system more efficient, we must ask whether the consequences of reform are being treated equally.

My third reflection is that delay is a systemic problem and requires a system-wide response. If we increase judicial capacity, do we have enough court staff, prosecutors and defence lawyers to support it? Resources are plainly necessary, but my experience across the Commonwealth suggests that resources alone will not be enough. That has been expressly recognised in the review by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson.

Many Caribbean states, for example, operate under much greater resource constraints than in England and Wales. Recognising this, these jurisdictions sought to confront these problems by setting clearer time limits, improving case management, using technology more effectively and reforming procedure. We see related approaches in other Commonwealth states that are streamlining procedure and setting time limits.

I am not suggesting that England and Wales should simply import these solutions from elsewhere. The lesson is much more fundamental. There is no single solution to delay. We should set expectations, measure performance and manage cases effectively. We should ensure that defendants receive the due process for which they are entitled. In turn, victims will receive their own due process.

In its introduction, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s 2024 guide to case management sought to align efficiency with what it called

“enduring constitutional values underlying the administration of justice”.

What does that mean in practice? It means that efficiency cannot be considered in isolation from the fundamental principles on which our justice system is underpinned: respect for the rule of law, due process, effective access to justice, equality and the right to a fair trial.

These principles are not obstacles to an efficient justice system. They are one reason we have a justice system in the first place. As we seek, rightly, to reduce delay, the question cannot be simply: how quickly are cases moving through the courts? We must also ask: are we delivering justice fairly? Efficiency is not an alternative to justice. Properly understood, it is a means by which justice is delivered, and it must always serve the ultimate purpose of the system: fair, independent and timely administration of justice. I support the Government’s determination to address delay. From the perspective of a defendant, it means ensuring the pursuit of greater efficiency. If we do not do this, it will lead only to wrongful convictions and error, which, in turn, undermine confidence in the justice system. I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that these reforms deliver both.

19:20

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on his excellent speech. I particularly welcome the chairman of the Prison Reform Trust to this House. We need more experts on rehabilitation here.

Formerly I have questioned the Clause 16 abolition of the presumption that children benefit from safe contact with both parents. I said that we would need to mitigate personal and societal harms that were highly likely to come as a result, particularly as parents not using the courts will no longer have this as a starting point. I proposed other changes to the Children Act 1989 that should accompany the rather blunt instrument of abolition, particularly improving the welfare checklist.

My sense is that the Government are determined to press ahead with abolition, but I am heartened that colleagues in the other place do not seem willing to discard the presumption without a fight. It was brought in under the coalition through the Children and Families Act 2014 by the Minister, Edward Timpson KC. It is an understatement to say that he is a specialist: a family law barrister with a focus, before and after his political career, on cases of vulnerable children. The presumption does not create an automatic right to contact and certainly does not elevate parental rights above children’s welfare. The paramountcy of the latter was in no way compromised. It was vital then, and still is now, to reinforce the principle that, wherever safe and appropriate, children generally benefit from having both parents involved then and throughout their lives; hence the presumption is rebuttable and expressly qualified by risk of harm.

Crucially, the intent was that the legislation should have an influence beyond the courts in what is called the shadow of the law. We urgently need to encourage a wider societal expectation that both parents should continue to play a positive role in their children’s lives following separation—obviously, if it is safe for the children. I urge the Government not to ignore this history, because one of our besetting sins in this place is to ignore institutional memory.

I agree that we must consider recent evidence and listen to current concerns about a pro-contact culture and children and parents affected by domestic abuse. However, there are methodological issues with the research which is in large part being used to justify, if not require, this change. The authors of the Ministry of Justice October 2025 review said that they had used small, unrepresentative samples and did not access complete court files. The evidence pre-dated major reforms, such as the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and the updated practice direction 12J. Crucially, they did not properly examine the effect on children of losing a relationship with a safe parent. As to whether there is a pro-contact culture, Sir Andrew McFarlane, previous President of the Family Division of the High Court, cautioned against using such a term.

Finally, exercising the rebuttable presumption, given its qualifications, requires that all involved are aware of domestic abuse. Evidence of poor practice is not the same thing as evidence that the statutory presumption itself has caused or materially contributed to that poor practice. The tragedy that the campaigner Claire Throssell MBE endured when her ex-husband killed their boys while they were in his care, for example, pre-dated the presumption. Such tragedies must not be ignored, and they absolutely require us to examine the system and improve safeguarding. But we seem to have forgotten the maxim that hard cases make bad law. It is not at all clear that removing this presumption will make children safer.

I was saddened to read the rather coercive emotionalism on Report in the Commons when the honourable Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge harangued those opposing the repeal and accused them of audacity. Previous reviews—including, to be fair, those commissioned by a previous Conservative Government—made certain recommendations. However, it is Ministers’ responsibility to weigh the evidence presented, decide whether it is strong enough to make a major change, and not outsource a decision to researchers. It is not audacity to come to a different conclusion.

I am concerned that the case for repeal has not been sufficiently established and that we are reaching for it as a badly targeted remedy. A large body of research says that children’s welfare is furthered by safe contact and better relations with both their parents. The ability to co-parent is a vital consideration and depends on parents’ relationships with each other; hence my interest in improving the welfare checklist to take account of these, a proposal first made during the passage of the Children and Families Act by Labour MPs and Peers.

Legislation and social policy did not give attention to relationships in the late 1980s, but that situation has changed utterly, so it would be highly appropriate to include them now. However, changes to the welfare checklist would not send the same signal as the existing presumption. Sir Andrew McFarlane’s estimate is that 38% of separating families use the courts and the remaining 62% do not; hence, while the welfare checklist is central to judicial decision-making, it is not systematically applied to the 62% who are separating in the shadow of the law. To reiterate, the presumption was intended to establish a broader societal starting point about the importance of safe parental involvement.

In summary, it is not proven that removing the presumption would improve outcomes for children as much as stronger risk assessment, better judicial training to ensure that the law is properly understood and applied, and more effective safeguards. The objective in 2014 was what genuinely served children’s best interests. The most effective response to that end should be the one that we reach for.

Women’s Aid has written movingly about 67 children who have died since 1994, many before the introduction of the presumption, following unsafe contact with an abusive parent. It blames the presumption, despite it coming into force in 2014. As that causation is unproven, why should abolishing the presumption prevent deaths? Removing it will, however, have lifelong negative effects for children when safe parents are excluded from their lives. It will reverberate throughout whole extended families and wider society, which is already struggling with the damage of severed relationships. I fear that Clause 16’s removal of the presumption will inflict damage far beyond any good it might do.

19:28

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, and thank him for his fascinating speech, which was about his family, varied career and public service. I know he will bring a great deal of that to good effect in this House.

I expressed wholehearted delight that the Government’s original plan to severely limit jury trials had been abandoned—little did I know. It would have been a grievous mistake and not the solution to the problems facing the criminal justice system. I am all too aware of just how terrible the situation now is. I have a great fondness for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. I count him as an inspiration and a friend. While his analysis of the problems facing the system was more or less right, his central recommendation was utterly wrong.

The justice system of this nation is greatly enriched by the role played by juries. The central argument for them is the participation of ordinary folk—the people—in these processes. It is so rare that the people, who do not feel listened to, get the opportunity to participate in something so serious. It feels like déjà vu standing here talking about this because, in my early years in this House—now 30 years ago—I had great battles with the then Labour Government, who wanted to damage the jury system. Fortunately, they did not succeed, but I made myself rather difficult to my party by resisting the changes it sought. Now here we are doing it again. This is one place where people have an opportunity to legitimise a vital part of our system. This proposal is a great mistake. This is about democracy and something that is almost intangible.

We all tell stories about taxi drivers. A taxi driver, when taking me home from here one night, said to me: “Do you know that I have sat on a jury three times? It has been the most important thing in my life. I just drive cabs, but here I am making a decision that affects the lives of other people. I’ve acquitted and I’ve convicted, but to be in that position makes me feel that I have played an important part in something real and vital in our world”. I do not think we should underestimate that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, mentioned, judges do not understand just how much a jury is a guardrail for the judiciary. In the end, there is a division between the jury, which decides on the facts, and the judge, who guides and makes decisions on the law. That severance, whereby the ultimate decision is in the hands of the peers of the person in the dock, protects judges from ignominy, attack, reprisals and, nowadays, doxing—judges’ addresses can be found, which makes them more at risk than they ever were in the past. It is important that we think about the position of judges.

I do not support removing juries from complex trials and fraud trials. The idea of a Secretary of State being able to decide whether to open the expansion up is shocking. Judge Rivlin, who sits at Southwark Crown Court and has probably tried more fraud cases than any other living judge, made a very strong argument that juries are perfectly competent to judge such cases. You do not have to have a maths degree to judge when people are being dishonest, and that is what fraud trials are all about.

The Government should think again about removing the defendant’s right to elect trial by jury in “both way” cases, and about this idea that you can appeal from the magistrates’ courts. I would add to the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, about the chaos in magistrates’ courts because of the shortage of magistrates. I hope we have had conversations with magistrates to find out whether they welcome the surge of new cases that will come their way. This has not been thought through well enough.

I remind everybody that the huge backlog of cases did not come from nowhere; it is the result of cavalier and reckless cuts—closing courts, decreasing court sitting days and the ruthless savaging of legal aid. Young professionals, who have spent years training, now cannot afford to practise at the criminal Bar and are having to find other, more lucrative ways of making a living, so days are lost because of the shortage of barristers to conduct cases. Noble Lords have heard all about the disarray of courts, the dereliction of the buildings and the failure to get people to court in time because of the other areas of crisis in our system. The prison system is underfunded, so transport is not available. This is not, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, described, just because of the remand system somehow, but is due to the whole chaos of underfunding in the Prison and Probation Service—you cannot think of alternatives to prison, so recidivism rises.

There are serious issues here. I endorse the recommendations set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. I urge the Government to reclassify assaults on emergency workers as summary. A huge amount of the cases bunging up the courts apparently concern low-level assaults and unpleasant behaviour towards emergency workers. Cases can be removed from the backlog. A good sifting could involve removing some of the cases that would not need to proceed at all. I have made the suggestion, and I make it again, of introducing suspended prosecutions, where you do not prosecute at all in some cases but give a warning that, if you offend in the next two years, that prosecution will go ahead along with any others. We could do that. We could make use of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu. She has retired from practice, but she knows how to meet thresholds and would be of great value. There must be many people like her. We should be offering a 40% reduction in sentencing for guilty pleas; that would induce many people to plead guilty at an early stage. We could divert cases into community responses if we have a better Probation Service and recruit and train people well.

As someone who has spent their life arguing for better justice for women, I welcome the fact that there should be specialist courts. It is wrong for victims to have to wait years for a case to start, but we can deal with that by creating specialist courts for sexual offences, as we seek to do for domestic violence. There are many other things that can be done. The Bar Council has come up with suggestions and so has Justice—I am president of its council. There are many things that can be done, but getting rid of juries and interfering with the jury system is not the way to go.

19:36

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, as a former youth magistrate, I welcome the opportunity to contribute. I declare an interest as a life member of the Magistrates’ Association. As a former magistrate, there are obviously many issues that I could talk about, but I will focus on Clause 5, which extends magistrates’ sentencing powers, and Clause 18, which concerns magistrates’ allowances.

I turn first to Clause 5. I recognise the argument for enabling magistrates’ courts to deal with a wider range of cases, as supported by the Magistrates’ Association, thereby freeing up capacity in the Crown Court. However, as we have heard, I fear that some of the changes in the Bill risk placing the magistracy under unsustainable pressure. Greater powers mean greater responsibilities. This is not simply a question of giving magistrates greater authority; it means them making more demanding sentencing decisions, with potentially more significant consequences for defendants. Whether the system is ready to support magistrates in exercising those powers effectively is a different question. Magistrates’ courts already deal with over 90% of criminal cases in England and Wales. It is worth noting that, in 2025, they disposed of approximately 1.46 million cases, which illustrates the substantial caseload already handled by the magistrates’ courts. Clause 5 will add even more cases. The Government must demonstrate that this additional work can be absorbed without simply moving the backlog from one court to another.

The Government have set a target of 21,000 magistrates by 2028-29, compared with just over 15,000 in post across England and Wales in April 2026. In the year to March 2026, 1,663 magistrates were appointed, although it is worth mentioning that 988 left—up 20% on the previous year. The latest figures show that 890 magistrates were appointed between July and September 2026, more than double the number appointed in the same quarter a year earlier. That is encouraging progress, but there remains a long way to go. Recruitment must be matched by the capacity to train, mentor and support new magistrates. I fear this could increase the workload of existing magistrates and make retention more challenging.

As noble Lords have already mentioned, at the end of June 2026 there were just over 380,000 open cases in magistrates’ courts, alongside just under 81,000 in the Crown Court. These are not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. Chief Inspector of Probation Martin Jones has highlighted the unfairness faced by

“defendants who are waiting for an excessive time, sometimes on remand, to establish their guilt or innocence”.

The Independent Review of the Criminal Courts estimated that these reforms will require 8,500 additional sitting days in magistrates’ courts. The Justice Committee has already questioned whether the Government’s plans to expand magistrates’ court capacity are deliverable, so I would be grateful to learn from the Minister how the Government will be able to provide the additional sitting days, legal advisers, court staff, IT systems and suitable facilities needed to deliver these reforms.

We already know we have an issue around the retention of legal advisers. Legal advisers are critical. If we do not have enough of them when these reforms are implemented, cases will not be able to be heard, even if magistrates are available to sit. There is also an issue around pay. Pay parity for legal advisers with comparable CPS roles must be fully implemented if we are to retain and attract sufficient numbers. I recognise that work is under way on this, but it must be a central part of delivering these reforms.

When magistrates’ sentencing powers were previously extended, additional training was provided by the Judicial College. Giving evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee in June this year, the Lady Chief Justice highlighted the pressure on the college. Referring to the Sentencing Act, she described

“a huge amount of additional training need”.

She also confirmed that there would be an increased demand for training as new magistrates came on board. The Bill will extend magistrates’ sentencing powers further. I therefore hope that the Government will provide the Judicial College with the further funding necessary to ensure that both new and serving magistrates receive the training they need to exercise these powers effectively before they come into force.

We must not put the cart before the horse. Operational readiness must determine the timetable, not an arbitrary deadline. The Magistrates’ Association has highlighted the need for efficiency measures to address avoidable delays and administrative pressures. I agree that this must be part of the solution, but efficiency measures alone cannot compensate for insufficient staffing or lack of available court time. This will ensure that victims, defendants and witnesses receive the justice they deserve.

I turn briefly to Clause 18. Magistrates undertake serious judicial responsibilities as volunteers, and they should not be left out of pocket. The Magistrates’ Association surveyed 1,362 magistrates in 2022. Its findings showed that many respondents had to make up the difference between the expenses they could claim and the costs they actually incurred. The association has long argued for greater flexibility in the expenses system so that reimbursement can reflect the modern working patterns and changing circumstances of magistrates, and I welcome the intention behind this provision—but the detail matters. The revised framework must ensure that legitimate expenses are reimbursed fairly and promptly. If the Government want to grow the magistracy and make it more representative, people in employment, people with caring responsibilities and people unable to absorb additional costs must be able to serve without financial disadvantage. A diverse magistracy is essential if the Bench is to reflect the communities it serves.

These two clauses are connected. Whether we are talking about sentencing powers or allowances, the principle is the same: the magistracy cannot be expected to do more without the necessary support. The contribution of magistrates should never be taken for granted. If we ask them to shoulder greater responsibility, we must ensure that they are properly supported.

19:43

[Baroness Neate (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to be part of this debate in which so much legal expertise and experience are evident. I too warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stace, with his important expertise and experience. I will speak in support of Clause 16 and also mention some ways in which I believe the Bill could be further strengthened.

In the Children Act 1989, the Conservative Government took what was then a huge step for children by establishing the principle that children have rights, whereas parents have responsibilities. At that time, however, domestic abuse and the dynamics of power and control that sustain it, often well after separation, were not as well understood as they are now. In 2015, when the noble Baroness, Lady May, was Home Secretary, the country took a major step forward in creating the criminal offence of coercive control, which was further consolidated in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. I mention this because we are learning as a country. What the present Government are doing, therefore, is bringing together our present knowledge of domestic abuse with the founding principle of the Children Act that the best interests of the child must always be paramount.

This change took a decade of ardent campaigning to bring about. The Minister and others have mentioned the incredibly courageous Claire Throssell. She and I launched the campaign when I was chief executive of Women’s Aid. As noble Lords have heard, Claire’s two sons, Jack and Paul, had been killed by their father during court-ordered unsupervised contact—contact that, importantly, Claire and her children warned the court might be lethal. These children were by no means the only ones to meet this preventable fate. Claire’s children and others might be alive today if abuse survivors and their children were heard and believed—they still frequently are not—and if the courts always treated the child’s best interests as paramount. The presumption of contact where there has been domestic abuse can facilitate post-separation abuse, which in turn impacts the non-abusing parent’s ability to parent and can lead to the child entering care.

Even now, the myth that the family courts are biased against fathers has huge traction over both people who appear in the courts and those who work in them. The highly organised activists who perpetuate that myth now are from the same mould as those who egged my house multiple times and slashed my tyres when we launched the campaign. That is nothing compared with what their heirs on social media threaten to women who expose the way our institutions inadvertently facilitate coercive control and abuse. I urge noble Lords in this House to retain a laser focus on children, whose best interests should indeed prevail in all cases.

However, this change alone will not be sufficient to enable the family courts to deal fairly with cases where there is domestic abuse. I urge the Minister to consider amending the Bill in some crucial ways. First, the need for effective regulation of experts providing evidence in the family courts has been acknowledged across specialist organisations and by judges. In particular, the highly contested concept of parental alienation is used in ways that wrongly discredit both survivors and their children. When I was at Women’s Aid, I met many survivors who had been ignored and belittled in court in the name of parental alienation—and little has changed. Just in the last few weeks, survivors have told the committee of this House scrutinising the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 that they suffered more in the family court than during the abuse itself.

Furthermore, in the Re C (‘Parental Alienation’; Instruction of Expert) judgment, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, stated that it was “unhelpful and potentially confusing” that the

“generic label ‘psychologist’ is not protected and may be used by any individual, whether registered or not”.

I urge the Minister to consider prohibiting the appointment of unregulated psychologists and psychotherapists to conduct a psychological assessment of any party or family member involved in child contact proceedings, and to ensure that all psychologists appointed as experts in the family court are appropriately qualified.

Secondly, despite domestic abuse appearing in 83% of private law children case files in the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report, research and survivor testimony show that there is a significant lack of understanding of domestic abuse by family court professionals. Judgments are less likely to serve the interests of children without sufficient understanding of how coercion and control—the heart of all domestic abuse—show themselves in the family court setting. The Government’s strategy for addressing violence against women and girls guaranteed training for all staff in criminal courts, but not family courts. I urge the Minister to mandate high-quality, trauma-informed training on domestic abuse for all family court professionals, including the judiciary.

I urge noble Lords to use this opportunity, when it comes, to reinforce the paramountcy of the best interests of children, and to reject misogyny and coercive control in the family courts by supporting Clause 16 and the other changes I have mentioned.

19:50

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest in that I am a practising barrister. I sometimes practise in judicial review cases arising out of the criminal justice system. As a very junior practitioner, I practised in the criminal, magistrates’ and youth courts as well as in the Crown Court.

I oppose many of the measures in the Bill but, in my allotted eight minutes, I wish to focus on one particularly egregious and counterproductive measure. The changes to the appeal mechanisms from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court will not help to reduce the backlog but will undermine faith in our criminal justice system. I strongly disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, that the changes to the appeal system are justifiable procedural modernisation.

My reasons are these. The current system is one that works well. If a person is convicted or sentenced in the magistrates’ or youth courts, they may appeal as a right to the Crown Court. If it is an appeal against conviction, there is a full rehearing of the charge before a Crown Court judge, sitting usually with two lay magistrates. Vexatious appeals are avoided by the fact that if you choose to spin the wheel and have an appeal to the Crown Court, the sentence may be increased. This is a sensible measure that is, oddly, abolished in the Bill before the House.

I have some vital statistics for the House to hold close and dear. These are drawn from criminal court statistics published on a quarterly basis by the Ministry of Justice. The latest set is to the end of quarter 2 2026 —that is June. I am about to give noble Lords the Government’s own figures. There are three. Appeals against conviction represent just 0.4% of the Crown Court case load. The annual total to June 2026 was 2,418 appeals. This next statistic is one which I hope noble Lords will all make sure to remember for a long time: of those 2,418 appeals, 976 were successful. That is an overall success rate of 40%. However, that figure of 2,418 includes abandoned appeals. It is more relevant to look at the 1,746 contested appeals—of which 56% were successful. That is the statistic that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, alluded to, and it is one which should jolt us all into a recognition that this provision in the Bill is not one which can possibly maintain the assertion that there is any problem with the way that appeals presently work.

Clause 6 and Schedule 2 will remove the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates’ court to the Crown Court. They will change the mode of appeal from a rehearing on the merits to a review of the safety of the conviction. The key decisions will now be taken by a Crown Court judge, sitting alone, who will determine permission on the papers. The lay justice’s role in the Crown Court is axed—a very regrettable development.

Seven points arise. First, the current system is swift and cheap. Compare the multi-stage process in the Bill with the current one-stop system. At present the appellant fills in a form; reasons for the appeal can be given but they are not necessary as it is a rehearing. The system works. Further, the new system will mean that the Crown Court judges are spending more time reviewing written applications for permission and responding in writing—presumably, also those decisions that are deemed capable of further review. Will this really save any time?

Secondly, the current system is fair and effective. The majority of contested appeals are allowed—I have told the House the statistics. The Justice Select Committee in the other place, reviewing the Bill, concluded that this

“plays an important role in correcting wrongful outcomes”.

The statistics show that the right of appeal is not being systematically abused by meritless appellants.

Thirdly, these measures are premature. The Law Commission is about to report on the issue of criminal appeals. It has been working on this since 2022. It published a consultation paper in 2025. The consultation has closed and we are awaiting the Law Commission’s final recommendations.

Fourthly, the Bill’s proposals are directly contrary to the Law Commission’s provisional recommendations, which include the retention of the current system of automatic rights of appeal. It is paragraph 5.86 of the provisional recommendations, in case anyone wishes to look at it.

Fifthly, this proposal is directly contrary to the Justice Select Committee’s recommendations. The Justice Select Committee in the other place recommended that the proposal is postponed, pending the Law Commission’s report. The Select Committee said in chapter 3 of its report that appeals from the magistrates’ court represent

“a small and declining proportion of overall Crown Court receipts, with only 0.4% of magistrates’ court decisions appealed in 2025”.

The Ministry of Justice’s own data does not support the premise that appeals make a material contribution to the Crown Court backlog. We are not persuaded that this proves a sufficient justification for the scale of reform proposed.

Sixthly, the Bill would place a greater burden on magistrates. The premise of the new system is that Crown Court judges will review the grounds of appeal alongside the transcripts of proceedings before the magistrates’ court, including reasons given by the magistrates for their guilty verdict. This means that magistrates will now have to give appeal-proof decisions for their reasons. That places a greater burden on magistrates to craft comprehensive reasons and to show that they have correctly applied the law and the facts. I very much share the doubts about the readiness of the magistrates’ court system to cope with this, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and others.

My seventh point is that the new system of appeals impacts on access to justice. An issue raised in the discussion of the Bill is generally that legal aid is less easily available in the magistrates’ court than in the Crown Court. The income cut-off is about £22,000. Roughly half of defendants before the magistrates’ court defend themselves, whereas it is unheard of, more or less, in the Crown Court. Introducing a highly legalistic system of appeals will impact on access to justice for many middle-income defendants. Can they really be expected to analyse the reasons themselves and identify grounds of appeal?

In conclusion, the current system is consistent with the centuries-old tradition of trial by lay justices. It is the other side of the coin of summary justice. There is no need for these changes. It is all too rare that there is an issue which unites me with the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Fox of Buckley and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. This is surely a red flag to the Government. These measures are unsound, unjust and unnecessary and should be withdrawn.

19:58

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have been in touch with me and have come to see me, including all the organisations that have briefed me, from Amnesty to the Bar Council and Liberty. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stace, on his maiden speech today and the work he has done before coming to this House, including with the King’s Trust.

I welcome the aim of today’s Bill to produce swifter justice for victims, witnesses and defendants. The pressure is astronomical, with the Crown Court’s open caseload reaching a record of 80,829 in June this year. Almost one-third of them had been open for over a year, and over half were for sexual offences or violence against a person. The resource burden, as well as the distress felt by the parties involved, cannot be overstated. One can never understand what it must be like to live in this situation.

I will talk about the importance of jury trials. A jury brings together 12 different citizens, each with entirely different lives and experiences. It is a rare form of public participation in justice. This helps to build confidence in outcomes and is a fair part of the right to be judged by one’s peers. At the same time, it is absolutely vital that legal aid is available in all criminal trials, including those concerning domestic violence. We have to ensure that legal aid is available; there must be no going back on legal aid.

Clause 1 would go further than the recommendations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, which apply to offences carrying a maximum sentence of two years or less. I hope the Government will recognise the importance of jury trials and work to protect this fundamental right. I also hope that the Government will consider the impact on women, as well as race and socioeconomic status, especially considering institutional bias and the implications on access to justice and public confidence.

The criminal justice system is not working for victims of crime, witnesses of crime or criminal defendants. Indeed, it can scarcely be described as a system. All are prejudiced and stressed by the increasing delays, which are among the most significant features of the way the criminal courts operate in practice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has warned that a radical extended package of measures is needed to prevent total collapse—this is absolutely true; the figures show this to us. Something has to be done, urgently and effectively. The status quo is not an option, but there are important limitations on what can be done. Equally, jury trials must be preserved, as I said earlier, and legal aid must be available.

The problem in the Crown Court is that many cases are heard by a judge alone, rather than by a judge and a jury. I think this should be possible only for lengthy and technically complex fraud and financial crime cases. Enhanced jurisdiction must be considered for magistrates’ courts, which have increased sentencing powers and controls over appeals. However, it is difficult for magistrates to sit for more days than possible, because of issues around having time off work and having extra training—that makes it quite difficult at present.

The National Audit Office has attributed at least part of the backlog to fewer criminal barristers and solicitors, and the legal profession points to fewer sitting days. Funding is needed for extra sitting days. The magistrates’ courts already hold a record 380,230 open cases, and the chair of the Justice Committee noted that the magistrates’ courts’ workload has risen by 65% in the past three years. We do not want to risk adding more pressure there. I hope priority will be given to having more advocates, more sitting days and more courtrooms, so that the backlog is cleared without narrowing choice. Courtrooms have to be made suitable—at present, half of them are not suitable for cases to be held in; they are in a terrible state.

Finally, I would like to touch on the issue of defendants. We have a human rights obligation to prisoners awaiting trial and on remand. It is important that the prison system, under whose care they are placed, ensures that they appear for their case at the right time and in the right court. Prisoners are not being produced on time. When a defendant is not brought to court on time, a hearing day is lost, and a person waits longer for a decision on their liberty. We have to look again—I know that this is likely to happen—at the contracts between the Prison Service and those who bring prisoners to court. What has been happening over the past few years is disgraceful.

20:04

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a powerful debate, memorably marked by the excellent maiden speech of noble Lord, Lord Stace, which certainly did not support a diagnosis of imposter syndrome. It was a pleasure to hear his measured endorsement of the open discussion of difficult issues with people of differing views—that is exactly what we hope to achieve in this House. It was also a pleasure to hear the powerful speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, whose report has so influenced the Government and this Bill, including his unanswerable assertion that we need a combination of increased funding, structural reform and increased efficiency.

My noble friend Lady Brinton spoke to the issues facing victims in the criminal justice system. I will speak to the Bill’s more controversial proposals for that system, and on an issue that I believe should be, but is not, covered by the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and others are clearly right that we are trying to respond to the years of underfunding that have led to the appalling backlog of 80,000 cases awaiting Crown Court trials. However, it is not proven that restricting jury trials would markedly reduce the backlog. Take into account, for example, that judges would be spending time writing judgments and that appeals would proliferate. Effective measures to reduce delays should include increased sitting days, reliable prisoner transport, maintaining the courts, and smarter use of new technology for listing and case management. As the Minister said, the Government have successfully set out on this process. Trying two cases in longer court hours over two sessions a day, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Brinton, would significantly cut delays.

The Crown Court backlog has now stabilised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out. From January to June, it rose by just 367 cases—0.46%. Although the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has some arguments with the interpretation of the present figures, there are still ways of cutting the backlog that do not involve the entire suite of proposals in the Bill. Yes, we must reduce it further, but why have the Government not revised their projections, given the recent improvement of which the Minister spoke and which the figures suggest? The noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Garnier, pointed out that we need more reliable and fuller information before we pass the Bill.

The serious problem is now in the magistrates’ courts, with a backlog in June, even excluding single justice procedure cases, of about 169,000 cases—up 16% in a year. Yet the proposals in the Bill, removing the right to elect jury trials and increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers, would transfer to them many more cases, and they would be the bigger and more time-consuming ones.

In addition, the threat to jury trials has not disappeared. First, there is the removal of the right to elect. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, I accept that there is some evidence of hardened criminals gaming the system and electing for jury trial for bad reasons: to delay the trial, to weaken prosecution evidence, or to build up credit for time on remand or under bail conditions Some pretty trivial cases do come to the Crown Court, but the gaming of the system could be addressed, partly at least, by increasing the discount for an early guilty plea, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, suggested.

We believe that the right to elect a trial by jury is a cornerstone of our liberty. Juries democratise criminal justice, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and others have said. The public trust juries. They think the system fair. They believe that 12 heads are better than one. They know different judges will reach different conclusions on the same evidence. They see judges as liable to be influenced by their own prejudices, social backgrounds and beliefs, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell said. The Bill proposes an allocation by magistrates alone, with no right of appeal. However, the best people to decide on allocation are Crown Court judges, who hear jury trials all the time, not magistrates who lack that experience. Denying appeals on allocation is unfair.

Along with the noble Lord, Lord Howard, I believe there should be a clear distinction between persons of hitherto good character, who would suffer irreparable harm to their reputation, careers and relationships from any conviction, and seasoned offenders, for whom the consequences of conviction are limited to the sentence imposed.

There are further practical pitfalls to removing the right of election, going beyond the pressure on magistrates’ courts from increased case numbers, as was well explored by the noble Lords, Lord Macdonald and Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Legal aid is far more restricted in magistrates’ courts than in the Crown Court. If magistrates are to handle more and heavier cases, we must improve the availability of legal aid, just as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich argued. Lack of representation in the magistrates’ courts is a recipe for inefficient and over-lengthy hearings, and for unfairness and unsafe convictions. Unsafe or unjust convictions will lead to more appeals, overburdening the Crown Court.

I turn to trial by judge alone in so-called complex or lengthy cases. The expectation was that this be just for long and complex cases of financial crime, as per the initial list in the Bill. Certainly, some fraud trials are extremely complex, but not all of them. Good, clear presentation by a competent prosecution team, using new presentational technology, and limiting the indictment to reflect the defendant’s criminality, can usually reduce both complexity and trial length. More importantly, the issues in even these cases are so often typical jury issues. What did she know? Did he sign that document, or was his signature a forgery? Was her behaviour dishonest or not? These are typical, human jury issues. As for trial length, we cope with lengthy trials now, and a modest increase in jury expenses, after a certain time had elapsed, would ease the burden.

While I accept that there are complex financial cases that could be tried by judge alone, they are not many. But the Bill has a nasty sting in the tail regarding “judge alone” trials. The initial list of offences in Schedule 1 is a list of financial crimes. Homicide offences and sexual offences would be expressly excluded, but that should be obvious. However, the express exclusion of those cases suggests a threat that the Government could go far further than fraud and complex financial cases. That is the point of the insidious and dangerous power in Part 1 of the schedule: to add any non-excluded offence to the list of “judge alone” offences—the “Joseph Stalin clause”, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard described it. The hard-won victory of campaigners against the restriction of jury trials originally proposed is to be at the mercy of an order from the Secretary of State. That is unacceptable.

Next, there is the proposed increase in the sentencing powers of magistrates. Again, that would lead to a massive transfer of cases to the magistrates’ courts, increasing the pressure on the magistrates and increasing the risk that defendants will be unrepresented and wrongly convicted or excessively harshly sentenced.

I turn now to an issue that should have been addressed in this Bill but is not. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, made a number of important recommendations in his report that have not found their way into this Bill. He devoted his first 10 recommendations to diversions. He recognised that criminal courts may not be the best forum for handling low-level offences, and so recommended the greater use of out-of-court resolutions. He spoke of cautions, conditional cautions and other mechanisms for disposal, of rehabilitation programmes for drug and alcohol abuse, and of other health interventions. We should be keeping far more low-level offenders, both children and adults, out of the criminal justice system when it is plain that their problems should be handled constructively and with sympathy, rather than through blunt and often profoundly unhelpful recourse to the criminal courts. The Minister, and the former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, have been very supportive of alternative disposals or out-of-court resolutions—both unattractive names for a far more constructive approach than we have at present.

I believe that this thinking should reflect our approach not only at the charging stage. Courts should be bound to consider, early in the criminal process, out-of-court resolutions in place of fully fledged criminal proceedings, much as civil courts consider mediation. There is potential either to hard bake criminality into the lives of low-level offenders, as we do at present, or to have a more humane and sensitive system.

This thinking can be extended to many areas. Take, as one example, unauthorised absence, by which parents who fail to ensure their children’s attendance at school are prosecuted under the Education Act 1996, are liable to be fined and, in extreme cases, can be sentenced to imprisonment. Yet so many of these cases concern children who simply will not go to school, for medical or psychological reasons, however hard their parents try to get them there. They need a therapeutic approach, not a penal one. A film on this topic of unauthorised absence is to be given a parliamentary screening in December. We have to change our approach not just to this but to other low-level offences that put people at risk of inappropriate prosecution. It is not just too many offences that clog up our courts; it is the mindset of a system that has long been too unadventurous to limit criminal proceedings to the cases where they are necessary and appropriate.

20:16

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Stace, to his place in this House and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I look forward to him bringing his extensive experience and knowledge not only to the consideration of this Bill in Committee but to the wider proceedings of this House. I hope I do not misrepresent his views if I infer from his speech that he does not believe that the crisis in criminal prosecution begins at the door of the court but could more properly be addressed by considering the economic and social issues that allow a younger generation to drift into criminality in the first place—in other words, that we should consider root causes rather than just effects.

In an early speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, posited a series of alternative court mechanisms for addressing the backlog—what might be termed “Leveson 3”, albeit not a welcome prospect to the noble and learned Lord in his seat. That is perhaps beyond the ambit of the present Bill.

I seek to address the recognition, noted by my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, that there are significant backlogs in our criminal court system. Of course, we agree that they must be addressed—not only from the perspective of the victims of crime but from the perspective of those accused of crime. They should not have to wait year after year to determine their future, whether they are on remand or otherwise. They, too, are entitled to a reasonably swift resolution of accusations of crime made against them.

But timely justice cannot come at the cost of the right to trial by jury, which, in turn, if interfered with, is liable to undermine public trust and confidence in the justice system. We are concerned that the power proposed by the Bill would seriously undermine public confidence in the justice system. These proposals will weaken that confidence.

The Government began to recognise that serious problem in the other place, when they proceeded to remove Clause 3 of the original Bill, but they have not gone far enough. I express my concern and agreement with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, that, given the changes made to the Bill, there was simply insufficient consideration or scrutiny of the Bill in the other place. That seems to be a serious concern, albeit we are capable of operating effectively as a House that can review legislation from the other place. We have serious concerns that the criminal justice system should be the subject of detailed consideration by both Houses of Parliament.

Particular concern has been expressed across the House with regard to the right to elect a jury trial in “either way” cases and the impact of this and other measures on the magistrates’ court. I wish just to touch upon the views expressed right across the House on that issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, began by referring to the situation in the magistrates’ courts as “significantly worse” than it is in the Crown Courts. We heard from my noble friend Lady Sater about there being something of the order of 380,000 open cases.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, referred to the dangers of the magistrates’ courts being overwhelmed. The noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, questioned the capacity of the magistrates’ court to take on the additional court cases. Indeed, he pointed out the need for a plan, a point made repeatedly by noble Lords during the debate. My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier commended the practical approach that the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, took to the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, asked what modelling had been done to determine the impact of these changes on the magistrates’ court. As far as we can see, there has been little or none.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about there being “insufficient evidence” to support these proposed changes. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked whether there is any evidence that we are not simply shifting the problem to the magistrates’ courts. The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, talked about the damage to public confidence if the shift was made without adequate resourcing within the magistrates’ court system—not just buildings, magistrates or legal advisers but the provision of suitable legal assistance, which requires, in turn, that the issue of legal aid within the magistrates’ courts be addressed. None of this has happened.

My noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy simply posed the question: how are the magistrates’ courts going to cope with the increased caseload? Again, there has been no assessment of how that is going to be dealt with. There was a reference to the fact that we are recruiting 2,000 more magistrates, but when are they going to be trained and available? How are they going to cope in the meantime?

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, asked whether there had been conversations with the magistrates in any detail about how the impact would be dealt with. There are no answers. I invite the Minister to provide answers, and if he cannot do it this evening, to do it in writing and in detail, because, clearly, this issue has touched Members of the House on each side.

We then had the issue of whether there should be the removal of juries for complex and lengthy trials. I was rather taken by the observation from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who said that, generally speaking, in complex financial cases and cases of fraud, the issue is honesty. What better than a jury to determine issues of honesty? Indeed, that was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, in her address to your Lordships’ Chamber. That is the central issue in these cases, I agree, but it is one pre-eminently suitable for a jury of one’s peers.

Then there is the question of the possible expansion of the definition of “complex or lengthy cases” through secondary legislation, not even with an express provision that it would be dealt with by the affirmative procedure. My noble friend Lord Howard referred to it as “monstrous”. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, expressed concern about the removal of the “safety valve” by this provision and what happens when we have a Government of a potentially authoritarian bent who could then utilise such a power. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, referred to it as outrageous. Even the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, deemed it unacceptable. Therefore, I invite the Government to think again on that issue. If they do not do so then, again, I suspect we shall revisit this at a later stage.

I turn to the removal of the presumption of parental involvement. There, I adopt the expert views expressed by my noble friend Lady Barran. It seems to me that the Government are aiming at the wrong target; this was a point brought out by my noble friend Lord Farmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. There is no intent to elevate parental rights above the welfare of a child, but the idea that the presumption is somehow causative of some of the terrible events that have been spoken of not only is unproven but appears, on the face of it, improbable. This is a very badly targeted remedy, if it be a remedy at all. Therefore, again, I urge the Minister to reconsider.

The Government’s original plans were clearly unacceptable. Indeed, my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition was explicit when, in the debate on the King’s Speech earlier this year, he pointed out that the whole issue of blocking jury trial had never been mentioned in any manifesto, and that, accordingly, we would exercise the full freedoms of this House to defend that right. The Bill contains provisions on the right of election to trial by jury and the removal of jury trial in complex cases. Again, these were never the subjects of any manifesto commitment.

Of course, we are a scrutinising Chamber, and progress is best achieved through close engagement between Ministers and Members of your Lordships’ House. We on this side of the House are certainly committed to working as constructively as possible with the Minister to deliver a Bill that can improve the issue of the backlog in the court system—one not just limited to the Crown Court but extending to the magistrates’ court. I am reminded of a remark made very early on in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, when he said that the origins of this are a funding crisis. Perhaps we need to address that, as well as these provisions.

20:28

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for what has been, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, a powerful, thoughtful and thought-provoking debate. There is much for us to continue to discuss. Before I respond in detail to some of the points that have been made, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Stace on his excellent maiden speech and will comment on his rich and varied career. I do not think I ever imagined I would meet someone who was both chair of the Prison Reform Trust and the former CEO of Saga. I wonder which of those jobs is the more entertaining. Anyway, I congratulate him and I very much welcome him to our Benches. I am sure he is going to make a powerful contribution. I endorse my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s comment that his speech was humble and humane and, in that sense and in many others, entirely admirable.

At the heart of this Bill are principled reforms designed not simply to address the pressures that face our courts today but to ensure that our justice system is fit for the future. A number of noble Lords have spoken to me about some of the provisions in the Bill already, and I am grateful to them for their measured and constructive approach. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, that I promise to engage very fully not just with the Official Opposition but with all Members of your Lordships’ House, as I have already done on this Bill. I will continue to work constructively with all noble Lords who are interested in this. I do not underestimate what is at stake here, and nor do the Government.

I will address some of the points that were raised most frequently—as it were, the biggest concerns. If I do not get the chance to address every issue that has been raised, I promise to write in detail and will continue to engage. I will try to mention noble Lords who have raised these points, but I fear I will not be able to remember everyone and apologise in advance for that.

The constitutional importance of jury trial and the right to elect for a jury trial has been raised several times by noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Ashcombe, and, from rather different perspectives, my noble friend Lady Levitt and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The Government agree that the right to a fair trial is a fundamental constitutional principle. However, a defendant’s ability to choose the mode of trial is not a constitutional safeguard. Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees a fair hearing within a reasonable time, and allocating cases to the most appropriate venue supports that objective. The right to elect is not a universal feature of the common law system, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile said; indeed, Scotland does not operate a general right of defendant election, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, pointed out.

That said, when determining venue, magistrates will continue to apply the Sentencing Council’s allocation guidelines, considering the seriousness and complexity of the case alongside representations from both the prosecution and the defence. The constitutional principle we are protecting is the right to a fair trial before an independent court, and that principle remains fully intact.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised the question of good character and the right to elect. In the Government’s view, allocation should be determined by the seriousness of the alleged offending and not by the personal characteristics of the defendant. Magistrates’ courts already deliver fair and impartial justice in the overwhelming majority of criminal cases. A Crown Court trial is not inherently fairer. There is no statutory or straightforward definition of “good character” for these purposes, and introducing such a test would add greater complexity and subjectivity to allocation decisions.

The question of legal aid was raised by a number of your Lordships, including my noble friend Lady Mallalieu, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We acknowledge, as noble Lords have noted, that the Bill will result in more cases being heard in the magistrates’ court, where the legal aid means test is less generous than in the Crown Court. However, having looked into this, we are confident that the majority of defendants currently charged with “either way” offences will be eligible for legal aid in the magistrates’ court under the existing financial eligibility rules.

For individuals who do not qualify, however, support is available through the hardship review mechanism, as well as the free duty solicitor scheme, which may provide legal representation at the first hearing. We have listened carefully—this is an important point—to concerns about legal aid eligibility in the magistrates’ court in the context of the Bill’s reform to the right to elect. In light of this, the Government have accepted in principle recommendation 155 from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, to increase the legal aid income threshold at the magistrates’ court. Final decisions on income threshold levels will be taken once the reforms have been implemented, subject to future funding decisions and operational considerations. I hope noble Lords take some reassurance from that.

There was a theme that ran through the entire debate today about the question of whether we were putting too much strain on the magistrates’ court system. It was mentioned by my noble friend Lord McNicol, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Mallalieu, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and, notably, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. The Government’s view is that the magistrates keep the system turning; they already handle more than 90% of all criminal cases, completing around 1.5 million cases each year, more than 11 times the number in the Crown Court, and deal with cases triable either way four times faster than the Crown Court. We of course recognise that additional demand will have an impact, and that is why we are increasing funded sitting days from 114,000 last year to 125,800 next year, rising to a target of 131,000 sitting days by 2028-29.

We have launched a multi-million pound recruitment campaign, and through this we are increasing the size of the magistracy by around 50%, as I said in my opening remarks. We are also increasing overall capacity through the recruitment of legal advisers and district judges, with recruitment programmes expected to provide sufficient judicial and legal adviser capability to support the increase in funded sitting days by 2028-29.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked about magistrates and whether we have asked them if they support these measures. The Magistrates’ Association is on the record as saying it supports these measures, and it is in our own Library briefing that it is supportive of them. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and I very much look forward to working with her, as we are working on other issues too. She clearly has extensive experience. I particularly note the points that she and a number of noble Lords made about training, which is obviously critical. It is a statement of the obvious that recruitment is one thing, but getting people trained and functioning effectively is something else.

The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, asked me about models and assessments; the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Keen of Elie, also asked me about this. We are confident that the remaining package of reforms, combined with record financial investment and our work on efficiencies, frees up enough Crown Court time to turn the tide on the backlog and to start delivering swifter justice for victims by the end of this Parliament. My honourable friend Minister Sackman has made that commitment many times. In fact, without the operational challenges of creating the Crown Court Bench division that would introduce juryless trials for less serious offences in the Crown Court, we shall be able to act quicker to implement other reforms and begin reducing the backlog sooner. We have published modelling that I have circulated to noble Lords who have attended various engagement meetings I have had.

That modelling shows that our remaining package of reforms, when combined with investment and our work on efficiency, sees the backlog peak in 2028 before starting to fall rapidly over 2029. With the accelerated implementation of the measures removing the right to elect, and of the magistrates’ court sentencing powers, we can go faster and turn that tide sooner. Our model suggests that, in fact, the backlog will peak in 2027 before starting to fall. That means that we should be able to get the backlog down sooner in this Parliament.

I want to be completely clear with your Lordships about this. The data has been published and we will keep it under review. I shall be happy, as we go through Committee, to discuss this with noble Lords and to be clear about it. We want to be transparent. Obviously, we want the magistrates to have the capacity to deal with the extra burden. We have published our models, as I said, and I will continue to discuss those with noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, asked me about the Institute for Government’s observations. I understand that it has endorsed our model and said that it agrees with the analysis that we have set out of when the backlog will come down.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Mallalieu for their contributions on the court estate. Obviously, we know that this is an important question; a number of references have been made to buckets and so on. We need to address the inefficiencies in the system. We must pull every lever, not just for structural reform but for investment and efficiency, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, encouraged us to do—in parallel, rather than choosing between them.

We have started to modernise our courts through greater use of technology and AI, and we are developing specialist case progression staff in every Crown Court centre, expanding appropriate remote hearings and investing over £17 million in virtual remand hearings. Pilots to help reduce delays and improve court productivity are under way. Again, efficiency in the court system is something we will have to think about as we go through these debates, and, indeed, beyond. We will continue to think about ways in which we can make the physical, as well as the technological, infrastructure of the court system more robust.

I turn to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, among others, about diversity in the judiciary and the magistracy. For all the reasons noble Lords have given, diversity in the judiciary and the magistracy is vital to maintaining public confidence, widening the pool of talent, and ensuring that the justice system benefits from the full range of skills and experience across society. Significant progress has been made for new entrants. This last year, women accounted for 55%, and 16% of new entrants to the judiciary were from ethnic minority backgrounds.

That is a positive, but there is clearly much more work that we can do, and need to do. That is why the Lord Chancellor and the Lady Chief Justice are co-chairing the Judicial and Legal Diversity Board, which looks across the whole system to improve diversity while maintaining appointment on merit. We think that is very important. I have also mentioned that we are engaged in a major magistrate recruitment campaign, targeted outreach and streamlining recruitment processes so that we can attract a broader and younger range of candidates to the magistracy, and ensure that it better reflects the communities it serves.

The question of appeals was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Murray and Lord Carlile, and my noble friend Lord McNicol. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, identified that an automatic right to a full rehearing impacts adversely on victims and witnesses, who may not be prepared to return to court a second time. We know that some appeals succeed not due to an identified error in the original trial but because victims and witnesses feel unable to relive the trauma with a second trial at appeal. We would all agree that this is not how we want things to operate.

Magistrates already give their reasons for their decisions, and these will be recorded and available to the judge to decide on the merits and scope of possible appeals. I note the comments that have been made about training and access to legal advisers. I also note the comments about the Law Commission. The Law Commission’s report was commissioned in 2023, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, has reported since.

I now turn to “judge alone” trials, which are an important aspect of the Bill for complex and lengthy cases. This was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Marks and Lord Howard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. We have heard concerns that Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the Bill could be used, over time, to expand the scope of Clause 4 beyond fraud and financial offending. Amendments to the schedule can be made only through the affirmative procedure—I confirm that for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, who asked me about it—which means a successful vote in both Houses. Offences cannot be added to the schedule without Parliament’s consent. This provision has been included to allow the system to respond flexibly, as criminal offending evolves over time. Any added offences would also have to comply with the statutory safeguards for the policy: a preparatory hearing; a public interest test; exclusions for homicide and indictable-only sex offences; and judicial decision-making.

On the same subject, I was asked by noble Lords about dishonesty. This change is not about who understands dishonesty better; it is about reducing the burden on ordinary people’s lives from sitting on long trials. Disclosure and case management of fraud cases must improve, and the Government have agreed in principle to many of the recommendations of the Fisher report and those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. This measure follows a long line of similar recommendations made by distinguished judges and independent reviewers, including those by Lord Justice Auld in 2001 and by Lord Roskill in the 1980s, as mentioned by noble Lords.

I am running out of time, but there are two important issues I want to deal with now; I will deal with the others in writing. I will address the question about victims, which was raised by a number of noble Lords. The case mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, of Emma—I realise that that is not her real name—was heart-rending, and I am very grateful to them for bringing it to our attention. We all agree that we do not want the delays facing victims today to continue. We believe that the changes in the Bill, not just to speed up these trials but in tackling harmful myths and the admissibility of evidence, matter. The special measures that are also addressed in the Bill make enlightened and principled reforms that will be of great benefit to victims.

On the specific question that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, asked, my understanding is that the judiciary’s national listing framework will put an end to the practice of “floating” lists. Along with these reforms, we are investing record levels in victim support services and consulting on a new victims’ code, as we have discussed before in your Lordships’ House.

I will say just a few sentences about rape and serial sexual offences in the courts. I note the comments made by a number of noble Lords about this very important initiative, particularly those of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We can do this without legislation, so we are rolling it out. I am very happy to discuss that with her further.

Finally, on repealing the presumption of parental involvement, we heard powerful contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. I absolutely undertake to discuss in detail those matters with them and others. This is a subject very close to my heart. I take it very seriously and I very much look forward to working with them on it. We have received divergent advice from your Lordships on this subject, so we need to work our way through it, but I think everyone agrees that we want to do what is best for the child.

I really have run out of time now—in fact, I have gone well over. I just want to say one other thing, which is to note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about out-of-court disposals and the comment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, about getting to the root causes, endorsing the comments by my noble friend Lord Stace. I too think those are things that we should discuss further.

With thanks to your Lordships for a powerful debate and apologies for exceeding my time, I look forward to discussing these matters with your Lordships in Committee and, indeed, in engagement between now and then.

Bill read a second time.

20:51

Commitment and Order of Consideration Motion

Moved by

[Lord Lemos]

That the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 6, Schedule 2, Clauses 7 to 17, Schedule 3, Clauses 18 to 27, Title.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I beg to move.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

[Lord Rooker]

After “Whole House,” insert “but that Committee stage will not commence until the Minister has made a statement setting out which clauses and schedules of the bill, including amendments made to the bill, the House of Commons did not have time to consider on the floor of the House;”.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, this will not take long—as I have said in the past. The purpose of this amendment is to strengthen the role of the elected Members of the Commons. There is no way anything I say or have said before is critical of Commons Members. My criticism is purely of the Government.

We are in a cycle where Commons Second Readings are, in effect, all guillotined. It is called a programme Motion, but it covers all Bills. The effect is that the Government always want to boast about the number of Bills, which is done at the expense of the scrutiny of Bills. We have Bills arriving in your Lordships’ House. As a result of inadequate scrutiny, we end up sending back more amendments than would otherwise be the case.

The Government in the Commons then blame the extra work for elected Members on the upper House abusing its position and therefore call for reform of this House. Even when we return amendments, the elected Members, under the guillotine, are limited in the time that they can use due to the original programme Motion.

The elected Members clearly need more time for scrutiny. The Government have to return some of the powers to Parliament that they have taken away with programme Motions designed to fit in more Bills rather than better Bills. Simply asking the Government for a list of what has not been allowed to be scrutinised in the Commons puts the buck back where it belongs. I see it as being to the supreme advantage of this House that it gets a Bill and knows, as the revising House, what has not been scrutinised in the first place.

As for this Bill, on Tuesday 13 October, the Commons dealt with the Bill on Report. The Government tabled two Statements that day, which took an hour and 30 minutes. As with other Bills, no “injury time” is ever allowed on the programme Motion, which would be a normal and reasonable thing to do, but it does not happen. The time allowed was from 3.29 pm to 6 pm, when the guillotine came down—two and a half hours. In those two and a half hours, the Commons dealt with 27 new clauses and 30 amendments from the Government and Opposition for debate. As is the new norm, elected Members had one general debate. That is a Second Reading debate; it is not a debate on Report about what has come from Committee. When you do it like that, it is equivalent to a Second Reading debate. When the guillotine came down, another 20 government amendments were added to the Bill on the nod, spread over four new clauses and two schedules.

When that happens, the numbers of the clauses and amendments change when they are put into the Bill by the Bill team and parliamentary counsel. It is not possible to go back to Commons Hansard and work out exactly where these changes are in the Bill unless you are aware of the way they have been put in there. That is difficult. This is the fourth Bill during this Session on which I have raised this issue, and I can tell the Government that there will be more.

My main concern continues to be the material that the elected House has never considered but put into a Bill on the nod. There is a pattern emerging, which is that Report in the Commons, as I said, is effectively now just a Second Reading debate on a very large group of new material, at the end of which all the government material is added and the non-government material is not considered before the guillotine. No scrutiny or attempt to raise specific issues takes place. After the guillotine, all the material added to the Bill is, of course, the government material only. All the rest falls, so it is done on the nod. It is clear, therefore, that elected Members have lost some powers of scrutiny.

As it is, I have been contacted by a long-retired parliamentary official who has also spotted the same pattern. They are not the only ones, of course; I caught the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, while I was out of the Chamber. They suggested, in the absence of the Government being open to Parliament, that the Libraries of both Houses could serve Parliament in this respect. However, why should the library staff have to search in the Bill and Hansard for material that is then unnumbered, because the numbers change when it goes in the Bill, when the Government control the Bill team and parliamentary counsel—which is government counsel really? They are the ones who know exactly which bits of the Bill have not been scrutinised in the Commons. They could provide the list. They could italicise the content, for example, or provide us with a list. It is to the abiding purpose of this House, in making revisions, that we have a better idea of what the elected House has not had time to properly scrutinise. I beg to move.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to place on record, as I have before, my strong support for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I am not going to repeat what he said; he said virtually everything that can be said and I agree with everything he said. It is within your Lordships’ power to give effect to the proposals contained in this amendment and I hope that one day we will.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, last Thursday in this Chamber, we debated a written constitution. During that debate, I took the opportunity to praise my noble friend Lord Rooker for making the points that he had made at previous Second Readings and makes again tonight. He speaks with great authority and experience.

I will say only two things. First, it should not be impossible for this House to be advised in some appropriate way of the elements of Bills—whether clauses or amendments—that did not, in fact, get debated in another place. Secondly, even if that did happen, it would not solve the underlying problem that my noble friend notes, which is that our legislative processes need to be improved.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on and thank him for his amendment. It describes precisely what is wrong with the legislative process. This is not a new problem. It is one that my own Government assisted with, as did the Labour Government of which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was a member under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The power of the Executive over the legislature has grown and is growing yet further. The purpose of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. Of course, under our constitution, the Executive sit in Parliament but they should not sit on Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is entirely right to point this out.

21:00

It is not just for the benefit of this House that we know what the House of Commons has not done and what has been done to it. It is so that the electorate, the public out there, are not fooled into thinking that the legislation that we consider in this House, and they sort of consider in the other place, has been considered in their name. It has not, or at least it largely has not, or at least it has inadequately been considered. I hope that even if the noble Lord does not push his amendment to a Division this evening, he will continue in his campaign and that he will attract support from right across the House, both in this House and in the other place, for his concerns.

All legislation is important, but legislation of the sort that we have discussed this evening is of special importance. It goes to the heart of the relationship between the state and the citizen. When the state, through the Government, inhibits or prevents the elected House from scrutinising legislation, sends it up here and then gets cross when we think about it, amend it and chide the Government for not allowing the House of Commons to do its job properly, we should not cower under government criticism. We should be reinforced in our desire to make sure that the public are properly served by Parliament. The Government are here to serve the public. Parliament is here to scrutinise and to hold the Government to account. If we do not do it, and if they do not do it, the public is misled and ill served.

I urge those on the Government Front Bench not to let this go on. Of course, I understand the need for a Government to get their manifesto Bills through, but they should do it properly and produce good legislation, not rushed and ill-considered legislation.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—words I thought I would never say. I will definitely vote for his amendment if he decides to put it to a vote at any time. I have been with Government Ministers recently who sniped about your Lordships’ House being a cause of delay for legislation, which is totally unfair because if they did their job at the other end, we would not have to do quite as much here. I say well done to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rooker seeks information on amendments debated in the Commons. I therefore thought it would be useful, in keeping with responses to similar amendments to other Bills, if I set out the scrutiny the Bill has had in the House of Commons.

The Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 10 March 2026, as my noble friend noted. The House of Commons then ordered that the Bill should be committed to a Public Bill Committee for its Committee stage. The Public Bill Committee itself decided its sitting pattern. The Committee completed its scrutiny in 12 sittings over six days. As usual, all clauses and schedules were considered, as were all proposed amendments and new clauses that were selected by the chair. The Bill was carried over, and on 13 October the other place took a full day on Report. All proposed amendments and new clauses selected by the chair were considered.

I have no doubt that noble Lords will add to the work of the other place with their usual high-quality scrutiny as we go through the rest of the stages on the Bill. There will, of course, be time to debate all the issues the noble Lord raises on the Bill in detail as the Bill progresses through this House. With that, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I would say to my noble friend the Minister that it is not his fault that he got the short straw, but he answered the first of these Motions that I tabled four Bills ago. I am not interested in what the Commons said at Second Reading or in Public Bill Committee. What I am interested in is what they put in the Bill at the last minute without any debate or scrutiny. That is all I am interested in—not how they conducted their affairs in a Public Bill Committee. To say they had a full day on Report when it was two and a half hours, for 52 new clauses, is a joke. That cannot be accurate in relation to what we normally think of as a full day.

I say to my noble friend again that it is not his fault he got the short straw. It is an unsatisfactory response and I will be back. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 9.05 pm.