Jury Trials
Debate between Andrew Murrison and Sarah Sackman(1 week, 6 days ago)
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The Minister for Courts and Legal Services (Sarah Sackman)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to end and insert:
“believes that the Government inherited a justice system on the brink of collapse with a record and rising caseload created under 14 years of Conservative mismanagement, austerity and cuts to the justice system that has forced victims of crime to wait years for justice; notes that the justice system has historically evolved to match the needs of the society it serves; supports the Government in making the investment required, including continuing to break records on the number of sitting days funded; looks forward to Sir Brian Leveson’s upcoming recommendations on reforms to improve efficiencies across the courts system; further supports taking forward reforms to the justice system based on Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts in which victims and the public can have confidence; and further notes that the Government will introduce legislation and publish its impact assessment in due course.”
“Let’s fix it tomorrow”, says the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)—tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow. What a luxury! Our justice system is in a state of crisis, as he has said, but although in every crisis there is risk, there is also opportunity. The opportunity here is one that we in government grasp, to modernise our justice system and bring it into the 21st century.
Let us start with the crisis. I did not hear an apology in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, but he did lay bare the facts about what the previous Government did to our justice system. Being in government is about choices. We know what choices His Majesty’s Opposition would make about the justice system because they had 14 years to show the world. Now the right hon. Gentleman says, “Let’s come together, talk about investment in our system and talk about solutions,” but what did the Conservatives do for 14 years? They closed half of all courts in England and Wales. Who did they entrust with the guardianship of our justice system? Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, Chris Grayling. They decimated our legal aid system and all but broke our prison system.
What is the result? Well, the right hon. Gentleman is right: there is consensus that we are in crisis and that the status quo cannot be tolerated. Nearly 80,000 criminal cases are currently waiting to be heard in the Crown court—more than double the waiting list pre covid. Victims are waiting years for justice—over 20,000 open cases in the Crown court backlog have been waiting for a year or more. Justice delayed is justice denied, and the Conservative party must bear much of the blame, but we will never hear the word “sorry.”
Dr Murrison
I am not interested in a party political rant, but plainly the Minister is. What I am interested in, however, is expediting justice for my constituents. She will have heard in my intervention on my right hon. Friend the shadow Justice Secretary that there is a model to solve that. Will she please explain why the model that my constituent James Ward brought forward, which had spectacular results in reducing delays in our criminal justice system, is not being applied but the abolition of trial by jury is?
Sarah Sackman
The Conservatives had 14 years to implement the solutions that they now say are blindingly obvious. The fact is that swift courts, flow courts, blitz courts—whatever we wish to call them—are being operated, but they cannot keep up with demand. Our justice system has simply not kept pace with the times and the demands of modern society. There is now record demand for criminal cases. There are more police officers, arrests are up by 10%, and cases arriving at the Crown court are up by 20%. Trials are more complex, with cases taking, on average, 71% longer. Technology, such as the smartphones we carry in our pockets, is creating more digital evidence than ever before. Jury trials take twice as long as they did in 2000.
Those delays mean that in many cases justice is simply not being served. With those delays, witnesses pull out, memories fade and, as others have pointed out, more trials crack. As a result, justice is not being served. We have a system in which, as we know, there are criminals who are planning to spend next Christmas, and the Christmas after that, at home with their families. They are gaming the system, while victims wait longer and longer for justice, dealing with isolation and mental torment, unable to heal and to move on.
No one is defending the status quo, yet no Government to date have been bold enough to take the necessary action towards finding a solution. I am a firm believer that politics is an agent of change—that is why I left my career in law to enter politics. When we are presented with a crisis, we see the opportunity, we find the plan, and we fix it—we make it better.
Legal Aid Agency: Cyber-security Incident
Debate between Andrew Murrison and Sarah Sackman(8 months ago)
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Sarah Sackman
I will not disclose the name of the perpetrators of this malign attack. I do not think it would be responsible for me to do so while the investigation is live and while they are being pursued, not least through legal avenues. I am not able to share that information at the moment, but when I can share it, I will of course update the House.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
In her zeal to have a pop at the previous Government, the Minister implied that this country was peculiarly vulnerable to cyber-attack. There will be people listening to her out there who may be encouraged by that, so will she correct the record and reflect upon the International Telecommunication Union’s global cyber-security index, which found Britain to be right at the very top of the league table for cyber-security, along with countries known to be experts, such as Estonia and Germany? Does she agree that while we must not be complacent, it is important to tell the whole truth?
Sarah Sackman
As I said, those responsible are the baddies here, but let me be clear: I was absolutely shocked when I came into the Department to find the state of the Legal Aid Agency’s legacy IT systems. They were fragile, vulnerable, at risk and, frankly, not fit for purpose. That is not my view; that is the view of the Law Society and lots of users. They have to use an arcane system that is not only slow but, as we have now found, is so fragile that it has exposed many of its users to an unconscionable risk. That is not good enough. It is not talking down the system; it is the state of the system. That vulnerability has been exposed by these malign actors. The fact is that the previous Government knew about it and failed to fix it. We will not make the same mistake.