Caroline Nokes
Main Page: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)Department Debates - View all Caroline Nokes's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Courts and Tribunals Bill
Caroline Nokes ExcerptsTuesday 13th October 2026
(2 days, 1 hour ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Courts and Tribunals Bill 2024-26 View all Courts and Tribunals Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 13 October 2026 - (13 Oct 2026)
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the further consideration of the Courts and Tribunals Bill as we reach Report stage. Not for the first time with this ministerial team, this Justice Secretary and this Prime Minister, what we were told was necessary has turned out to be unnecessary, what we were told was impossible is now possible, and what we were told was unavoidable was avoidable after all. This Minister told us again and again on Second Reading and throughout the Committee that each and every one of the measures in this Bill—each and every part of their proposals—was the only way to get on top of the court backlogs. But apparently not, because only days ago the Justice Secretary appeared on national television to announce a significant U-turn: the Government are dropping clause 3. We were told that their new division of judge-only trials was the only way the Crown court backlog could be brought down—that it could not be brought down without it. Yet now Ministers inform us that removing this very provision will actually allow the work to proceed faster.
The Opposition welcome this decision. I welcome the fact that the Justice Secretary put his name to our amendment removing clause 3, but how we got here matters. It is not the first time that this ministerial team and this Justice Secretary have let their Back Benchers defend the indefensible and then drop them in it. This same ministerial team and this same Justice Secretary told us that the release of various serious sexual and violent offenders was an absolute necessity, that they had no choice other than to put victims through the distress and upset over the summer. And then they did have a choice.
Why does this matter? Most of the time in politics in this place we are debating choices—which choice we should make as MPs and as different parties, weighing up the pros and cons of the options—but sometimes Ministers attempt to cut through that to secure the support of MPs by saying that they have no choice. When MPs resist and tell them their concerns over what the Government are proposing, Ministers have a fundamental duty to this House and to their own Back-Bench colleagues in particular. That duty is to test to destruction the proposition that there is no choice.
Only the Ministers have the army of civil servants, the data, the costings and the honest advice. When a Minister tells their own MPs that they have no choice, surely it must mean exactly that. That is how they secure the support of their Back-Bench colleagues. These Ministers have failed in that duty and have failed their colleagues. Ministerial credibility is a precious resource and this Minister has exhausted hers. If clause 3 was never truly required to tackle court delays, we must ask: what other assertions made by this Front-Bench team are equally unfounded? How can they expect their propositions of “no choice” to be accepted in future, and not just in future but on this very Bill before us today?
We must also be clear that, despite the headlines surrounding this partial retreat, the core damaging framework of the Bill remains almost entirely intact. The Government continue to press ahead with clause 1, which completely strips adult defendants charged with triable either way offences of their historic right to elect for a jury trial. At the same time, clause 6 doubles magistrates’ maximum sentencing powers up to 24 months. That means complex, high-stake cases—including sexual assault, actual bodily harm and burglary—will be retained in summary courts, exposing defendants to two-year prison sentences without ever having access to a jury.
Clause 7 and schedule 2 dismantle the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court. Instead of a full rehearing before a judge and lay magistrates, wrongly convicted individuals will face a restrictive permission barrier on written papers alone.
It should be clear that, taken together, we are still facing a fundamental attack on the existing rights to a jury trial. The provisions still represent a sweeping contraction of access to jury trial and summary justice safeguards. The opposition from legal professions, victims groups and civil liberties organisations remains as firm today as it was on Second Reading.
Dr Mullan
My right hon. Friend is right on both points. As he was speaking, the Justice Secretary said from a sedentary position that he removed that clause. Perhaps he does not understand his own Bill. You are retaining judge-only trials for complex and lengthy cases, and retaining the power to use delegated legislation to allow judges alone to sit on those cases. Exactly the sort of scenario that my right hon. Friend was describing would be produced.
Magistrates have a degree of confidence and community support that is in proportion to the use of their powers. If we significantly increase the use of their powers, the pressure on magistrates, and scrutiny of them, is also likely to increase. Picking up on that point, I want to make sure—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. That is the third time that I have heard the shadow Minister say “you”. It is not my legislation.
Dr Mullan
Lucky you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I take that point.
The schedule 1 powers that I have talked about are a significant Henry VIII power. Under proposed statutory instrument powers, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State will have the authority to add further categories of offences to schedule 1 by secondary legislation. I am not aware of any time before in this place when the Secretary of State could use secondary legislation to erode and remove the right to a jury trial from a particular defendant. That is completely unprecedented and indefensible.
The Conservatives do not merely criticise this bad package of legislation; we have repeatedly sought to put forward practical, evidence-based alternatives that tackle the delays without taking a sledgehammer to our constitutional rights. The Government must fix the operational failures that currently waste thousands of court hours every year. Last year, between 23% and 26% of Crown court trials were ineffective. Rather than stripping citizens of jury trial rights, the Minister should be focused instead on failures in prisoner transport, which result in hundreds of trials being derailed, simply because defendants are late to the dock.
The Government must keep all existing courtrooms open and fully funded, and must use new artificial intelligence tools for disclosure and listing, and they must expand live-link video participation. [Interruption.] Ministers on the Front Bench chunter that they are already doing that. If that is the case, why is the Crown court backlog going up? They are clearly not succeeding with the measures that they are bringing forward, and a number of things are getting worse.
We must improve case management and incentivise earlier case resolution, instead of forcing complex cases into the overburdened summary courts, where there are backlogs too. Extraordinarily, the Minister claimed that there was no backlog in the magistrates courts. I do not know how she decides what is or is not a backlog. Cases going up by 10% in one year is a backlog by any measure. I visited Liverpool Crown court, where the wait for trial is roughly half the length of the wait for trial in other parts of the country. The Government should replicate the proactive case management model successfully pioneered in courts like Liverpool, Preston and Cardiff, where active Crown Prosecution Service case ownership and early trial-readiness reviews have driven down backlogs.
Our sunset clause draws attention to the true motivations of this Government. If the Government sincerely feel that these measures are a necessity to bring the backlog down, as they have argued repeatedly to their Back Benchers, our clause is quite clear that when the backlog is down to the pre-covid average for a period of four quarters, these damaging, rights-eroding measures should be withdrawn. I do not expect that the Government will support that proposal today, because fundamentally they do not have the same faith that we do in the importance and value of a jury trial.
The Government’s partial U-turn demonstrates that sustained scrutiny can force a rethink, but a partial U-turn is not enough. The central flaws of the Bill remain: the abolition of the right to elect trial by jury, the risky expansion of summary jurisdiction, the restriction of appeal rights and the creation of secondary powers to expand juryless trials. We should not erode centuries of procedural safeguards to achieve marginal administrative speed gains. I urge hon. Members across the House, and especially those who have previously spoken out against these measures, to stand by their previous words, to stand by their principles, and to reject these remaining clauses tonight.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Can I just emphasise to Members that votes will come at 6 o’clock, which leaves us very little time, and inevitably not all Members will get in? I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
The entire criminal justice system is on the brink of collapse. We can all agree today that the current backlog in our Crown courts is unacceptable, untenable and unsustainable. The situation we face—a backlog sitting at over 80,000 cases and victims of rape waiting on average 424 days for their case to complete—is the direct result of the historic and monumental failings of successive Governments. Whether it is a lack of prison places, soaring reoffending rates or the horrendous backlog in the Crown courts with a growing backlog in the magistrates, it is a national emergency waiting to happen. But the Government’s plans to address this situation have been equally dangerous. Under Keir Starmer, this Government led us down a path—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We must refer to other Members by their constituencies. Oh, he is not a Member any more—apologies!
Jess Brown-Fuller
Absolutely. The right hon. and learned Member makes a really important point about the prisoner escort and custody services contract and ensuring that defendants are delivered to court on time, but not all defendants going into a Crown court are being held on remand. There are also defendants on bail who can get themselves to court, and it would be up to the listing officers to ensure that those cases are heard in the morning, which would take off the pressure that the PECS contracts clearly have in delivering people to start at a 10 am slot; instead, those defendants might be arriving for a 2 pm slot. He raises an important point and gives me a lovely opportunity to explain why I have thought about that and how we would overcome it.
New clause 2 supports the implementation of fast-track courts for rape and serious sexual offences. We have heard powerful testimony across the House during the passage of the Bill about the need for rape and serious sexual offence courts, which we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have called for. It was therefore welcome when the Government announced their plans to implement them, but it is puzzling that they have not included those provisions in the Bill, because there is no point in waiting—these courts should be implemented urgently, to bring an end to the disgraceful waits that these victims are facing.
The Government also announced when they agreed to roll out these RASSO courts that all judges presiding over them will undergo specialist trauma-informed training. Given the Government’s decision not to include domestic abuse cases in these RASSO courts, that would surely strengthen the case for having universal specialist trauma-informed training for all of the judiciary, which we have called for throughout the passage of the Bill.
New clause 11 would give victims the right to receive transcripts of all judicial summings-up and bail decisions relevant to their case. Amendment 15 is particularly relevant given the direction of the Bill, as it would ensure that magistrates court transcripts are free for victims and accessible within 14 days. On the issue of transcripts, the Government have made real progress, which I welcome. Many victims choose not to attend the entirety of their hearing or trial, and even when they do attend, being able to process the events of a court case afterwards provides a valuable opportunity to better understand why those decisions were made. Transcripts being freely accessible aids in moving forward with one’s life, and at every turn, the Liberal Democrats will continue to push the Government to go further.
Finally, I turn to new clause 17, tabled in my name. The Courts Act 2003 introduced Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration, which was established in 2005 but then closed in 2010. A 2022 Justice Committee report found that the argument for closing the inspectorate had not stood the test of time and called for the re-establishment of an inspectorate body. In his review, Baron Leveson also recommended a mechanism to inspect His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which was rejected by the Government. This is a particularly important time to introduce the additional oversight that a courts inspectorate would provide—a position that was also supported by the Victims’ Commissioner.
In conclusion, the Government have approached this issue in the wrong way, pushing unworkable measures, opposed by those working in the legal sector who have to deliver the reforms, and eroding the safeguards that protect those who come into contact with the criminal justice system, be it defendants or victims. The Bill before us today makes dangerous changes that will have little effect on the backlog. That is why the Liberal Democrats will be unable to support the Bill, which is unfortunate especially given the good clauses at the end of the Bill that deal with the serious issues around presumption.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
When I first put on my barrister’s robes and horse hair wig nearly 20 years ago, victims and defendants were not commonly waiting years for trial, victims of rape and serious sexual assault were not having their cases adjourned at the last minute multiple times, and it was not common to see significant numbers of defendants in the magistrates courts facing custodial sentences without lawyers and representing themselves.
Years of austerity, court closures, pandemic pressures, court sitting day limits and increasingly complex evidence have driven the Crown court backlog to 80,000 cases. Removing the limits on court sitting days has not been enough. The backlog is still going up and our criminal justice system remains in crisis. I welcome the fact that this Bill is now back before the House, as further action is needed. I thank the Government for responding last week to the Justice Committee’s June report on the Bill. I welcome Government amendment 3, which directly answers the concerns raised by the Committee and Members across this House regarding the proposed Crown court bench division, where a judge, without a jury, would have decided cases.
The Committee raised a number of other concerns. I will focus on three: the impact of magistrates courts delays, how the question of whether cases stay with the magistrates court or go to the Crown court will be determined, and the impact of the number of people representing themselves in our criminal courts, which is already too high. In order for the backlog in the Crown court to come down in this Parliament, as the Government intend, the reforms are to be brought forward sooner. I want to see rapid action, but we cannot ignore the storm that is gathering in our magistrates courts.
Clause 6 doubles magistrates’ sentencing powers to up to 24 months’ custody, shifting significant caseloads out of the Crown court, but the backlogs in our magistrates courts are already climbing month on month. Even without these reforms, the workload in magistrates courts over the last three years has increased by 65%. The Committee made it clear that without “significant additional support”, our local courts will not be able to cope.
It is positive that the Government are confident that they are on track to meet their target of 21,000 magistrates, taking numbers back to where they were in 2014, and I welcome additional recruitment of trainee legal advisers and district judges. But will that be enough? Will it happen fast enough? Do we even have enough physical courts to cope with demand, when 165 magistrates courts were closed between 2010 and 2020.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I will be introducing a five-minute time limit after the next speaker.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
I draw your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
It has been a peculiar pleasure to listen to the two speeches made so far by Labour Back Benchers. Both the speech of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and that of the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson), have been treats to listen to, and I feel I can do no better than to say, “Listen to both of them.” However, it would be wrong of me to say that I oppose the Bill in its entirety. The truth is that some of its provisions contain very useful and reasonable directions of travel. Personally, I do not have the profoundest objection to grounds needing to be given for an appeal to the Crown court. I think that would be a reasonable thing to require, provided that the Chairman of the Select Committee’s warnings are heeded and those who have to fill out that appeal are given the opportunity of advice. As has been said, I think by Opposition Members, the problem is that there is a lack of legal advisers in the magistrates court—what we used to call magistrates court clerks.
That brings me to another way in which I should commend the Minister and the Government. The initiative to enhance the resources of the magistrates court can only be a good thing, although I must warn the Minister that the recruitment of more magistrates is something that we looked at years ago, when I sat in the position that she now sits in. It is social and economic factors that are effecting the diminution in the number of those willing and able to put themselves forward for this onerous type of public service, so that diminution is not going to be remediable just by brave words and advertisements. It is going to have to be a sustained campaign, and it will not happen even in the term that she will serve as Minister—long may that continue. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] That was not a wish—it was an observation—but nevertheless, it was heartfelt.
With those cautious commendations given, though, I have to return to the very focus and centre of this Bill. It is a bit like asking us to be grateful to the crocodile who leaves us with our head after it has taken our legs. The reality is that the right of election of trial by jury is at the very heart of the right itself. Since the 17th century, Governments of all colours that have come and gone have continued to respect that as a right, not as a concession or a privilege afforded by the state to a defendant. It is perfectly true that in Scotland it is the court that decides whether or not the defendant should enjoy the right of trial by jury, but in England, it has always been a right—a right given, broadly speaking, to anybody accused of an offence serious enough to warrant more than 12 months’ imprisonment.
For the first time in English legal and political history, a Government have decided to breach that right, and to make the decision reside with the representatives of the state. That places the decision out of the hands of a powerless defendant—some of the most powerless in our society. Some of them may very well be guilty. Many of them may very well be guilty, but the system we have adopted over the centuries does not legislate so much for the guilty, but for the innocent caught up in the system. So many examples in history have shown how the innocent can be caught up in this system, and it is for the innocent that the criminal justice system is ultimately designed. It is designed for their vindication, requiring against them the level, burden and standard of proof that the criminal justice system enforces, with the presumption of innocence.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
I come to this debate with experience. I spent 15 years as a prosecutor, and during that time I was designated a sexual abuse prosecutor, which meant that I dealt with a great many cases involving sexual abuse and of course, domestic and other violence. I then defended cases, both in the magistrates court and, obviously, in the Crown court.
I welcome the Government’s decision to get rid of clause 3. I also welcome their decision to introduce a RASSO court, and the money that will ensure that that happens. I am grateful for the fact that the Government have listened. However, the central plank of my argument is that restricting jury trials is assumed to be the panacea that will solve the problem of the backlogs in both the magistrates court and the Crown court, which, with respect, is not the case.
The reasons for those two backlogs are virtually identical. Covid played a massive part, but so did closures in the magistrates court as well as the Crown court. The number of judicial sitting days were cut massively in the Crown court, and there were not enough sittings in the magistrates court because of the record shortage of lay magistrates. The cuts in legal aid for defendants in both the magistrates court and the Crown court have caused problems. Defendants in the Crown court often do not know what they are doing until they have sorted out their finances and can obtain legal advice from lawyers, and many who appear in the magistrates court are not represented.
We must also not forget that the police and other bodies in the criminal justice system have caused delays. Sometimes evidence is not ready when a trial starts. That applies particularly to unused materials and forensic evidence. In many instances pleas have not been discussed, and I know that even now many lawyers who are in court find that on the day of the trial there is a gaping hole in the evidence. That is something that we do not talk about. There is a capacity issue in other parts of the criminal justice system, and that must be dealt with as well. There has also been a problem with the prison services who produce defendants in courts. Defendants are often not produced in time, and that has an impact on trials, which are adjourned to other dates. The backlog is caused by those factors, not by the fact that in the case of either-way offences defendants have been electing for Crown court trials.
I believe that the Government have made a good start. They have spent money on increasing the number of judicial sitting days. However, I ask them to go further, and to provide even more sitting days, open up even more courtrooms in both the magistrates court and the Crown court, and, of course, ensure that there is proper legal provision for everyone. I think that that, along with the other things I have mentioned, will bring the court backlogs down. However, I am concerned about an aspect of the Bill that others have already mentioned.
At present, someone who is convicted in the magistrates court has an automatic right of appeal against conviction and sentence. Most people who appear in the magistrates court are unrepresented. The Bill currently states that such people must make a reasoned argument to the judge to obtain leave to appeal, but there is no way an ordinary lay person will be able to draft complicated legal arguments to justify why a sentence or, especially, a conviction should be considered further. I know that if I had to draft grounds for appeal, it would take me hours and days. I cannot imagine an ordinary person being able to that, because the court would have to say, “Fundamentally, you’re wrong in so many aspects.” Because of that, there will be unfairness in the magistrates court if people are not given their right, and we have heard that 56% of appeals are successful. The system is there for a purpose, and it helps.
Coming back to the RASSO courts, I know that some of my colleagues have talked about victims. Of course we all want to protect victims, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) said—
Sir Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I want to draw the House’s attention to new clause 22, which I have tabled with the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), my parliamentary neighbour, whose absence from the Government Front Bench is a matter of regret to all of us on the Conservative Benches. I thank both the Lord Chancellor and the shadow Lord Chancellor for engaging with us on these issues. The new clause would restrict immunity from civil suits for police officers in relation to certain conduct in preparation for criminal court proceedings.
I want to draw the House’s attention to a deeply troubling development in our law. Last year the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment that, in my view, risks placing police forces beyond proper accountability for serious wrongdoing committed during the preparation of criminal cases. If left unaddressed, this new legal principle could make it far harder for victims of police misconduct to obtain justice, even where the harm that they have suffered is severe and life-changing. The doctrine has been described as a form of police misconduct immunity. We all know that the rule of law depends on a simple principle: no one is above the law—not politicians, not public officials and not the police.
New clause 22, which I have tabled with the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley, would restore accountability and make it clear that there cannot be one rule for the police and another for everyone else. The issue arises directly from the 2025 Court of Appeal case of the chief constable of Sussex police and the CPS v. XGY. I know that the hon. Lady will refer to the case of XGY if she catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. The victim of the abuse had given her confidential refuge address to the Sussex police, and that address was later disclosed in court, exposing her location to the abuser and forcing her to flee.
The Court of Appeal answered the question by extending what is known as core immunity. Historically, this immunity was narrow but existed to protect witnesses and advocates for what they say and do in court, allowing them to give evidence freely without fear of being sued, but the Court’s judgment went much further. It expanded that protection beyond the courtroom and into the wider process of criminal investigation and prosecution preparation. In practical terms, it means that certain police actions connected to a future prosecution may now be shielded from legal challenge, even where those actions caused significant harm. The Court’s ruling therefore raises serious concerns about whether victims will be able to seek redress when police misconduct, negligence, human rights breaches or serious errors occur. That is why the case of XGY matters far beyond the individual victim involved.
I want to illustrate the practical consequences of the new doctrine, and the human cost, through another case with which I have been closely involved for some years: the case of Ali Kololo. Mr Kololo is a Kenyan forest dweller and woodcutter who was wrongfully convicted in 2013 in connection with the murder of a British tourist and the kidnapping of that tourist’s spouse, Judith Tebbutt. These were grave crimes. At the time, I was the Secretary of State for International Development and was engaged in the Government’s response to the kidnapping through COBRA, but we now know that Ali Kololo was innocent. A Kenyan court has since overturned his conviction, with the evidence showing that he had become a scapegoat in a deeply flawed investigation.
What makes this case particularly troubling is that the Metropolitan police played a significant role in supporting the investigation. The Independent Office for Police Conduct found that a senior Metropolitan police officer had a case to answer for gross misconduct. The investigation concluded that the evidence provided by the officer had the potential to mislead the court, because important forensic information had been omitted. The consequences for Mr Kololo were catastrophic. He spent 11 years in prison, he faced a death sentence, and he endured abuse, illness and separation from his family. He lost years of his life that can never be returned, and although his conviction was eventually quashed and he was released, he has yet to receive redress for the harm he suffered.
Let me be clear: the original principle of witness immunity serves an important purpose—witnesses should be able to give evidence without fear of personal litigation, and our justice system depends on that protection—but extending immunity far beyond the courtroom and into the wider conduct of criminal investigations risks creating an accountability gap.
Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Clause 17 of the Bill—Jack and Paul’s law—fulfils my constituent Claire Throssell’s promise to her two beautiful boys after they were killed in a house fire set alight by their known domestically abusive father during a court-ordered contact visit. Claire promised her sons that no more children should lose their lives like they did at the hands of an abusive parent. For nearly 12 years, she has campaigned relentlessly to honour that promise. When I first met Claire, I told her that if I was elected, I would do all I could to help her fulfil that promise, so it is a pleasure to have her in the Chamber with us today. I urge Members across the House to support this Bill and ensure that no more children die like Claire’s sons did, and that no more towns like our hometown of Penistone are left to grieve.
Clause 17 will repeal the presumption of parental involvement in the Children Act 1989: our Government putting children’s best interests first and tackling the pro-contact culture that prioritises parental involvement over children’s welfare. This is urgent. Domestic abuse continues to be everyday business in the family courts, featuring in 90% of the cases reviewed by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in 2025. Being a parent is a privilege, not a right, and when a parent poses a serious risk to a child, the law must act. Conservative Governments had a decade to act after the tragic murder of Claire’s boys and her campaign to change the law.