Oral Answers to Questions

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

As he is so often, my hon. Friend the Chair of the Justice Committee is correct. Often when a Nightingale court is set up, it does not have the required custody facilities, but it does free up space in our existing Crown court estate, which does have custody facilities, and allow more Crown court or jury trials in which the defendant is remanded to take place in existing facilities.

Crown court sitting days are very important. We have been clear that in the current financial year Crown court sitting days should not impose any constraints on listing and sitting cases. The situation for the coming financial year, starting in April, is the subject of discussions between my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, but it is fair to say that we are expecting a substantial increase in Crown court sitting days.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The Government’s answer to the question about the scale of the crisis in our justice system is that the backlog has been higher in the past, but the Minister knows that this is just a distraction. In 2010, Crown court cases took, on average, 391 days to complete. By 2019, the Government had closed half of the courts and had 27,000 fewer sitting days, meaning that each case took an average of 511 days. A total of 30% fewer cases were completed, but they took 75% longer. Each year that the Minister’s party is in government, justice for victims is further delayed. How can he be so complacent, announcing just 40 extra rooms? We have 20 Nightingale courts and the head of Her Majesty’s Courts Service said that we needed 200. When are we going to get them?

[Chris Philp]

A range of other measures are being used, not least the roll-out of the cloud video platform, which led last week to more than 20,000 remote hearings across all jurisdictions, and, as I have said, 290 jury court rooms, which is more than we had before. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the past, but he rather conveniently skated over the fact that the outstanding caseload in the Crown court before the pandemic in 2020 was 39,000, whereas in 2010, under the last Labour Government, it was 47,000. He asked about the number of cases and the number of cases being disposed of, but he neglected to mention that crime, according to the crime survey—the only Office for National Statistics-certified source of statistics—had fallen from 9.5 million cases in 2010 to 5.6 million in 2020 under a Conservative Government delivering reductions in crime. I notice that, last week, the shadow Justice Secretary talked about wartime juries of seven. I also noticed that, in June of last year, writing in The Guardian newspaper—

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[Robert Buckland]

I join my hon. Friend in his tribute to staff not only at HMP Bure but at every institution in the prison estate and the wider Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service community for the tireless work they have been doing since the outbreak of the pandemic.

My hon. Friend is right to point to the importance of vaccination. Already, prison staff who come within the existing criteria in wave one are being vaccinated in accordance with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advice. For the next phase, I am strongly and actively supporting the prioritisation of prison staff. My officials are working on that with the Department of Health and Social Care. The JCVI has already said that

“those involved in the justice system”

should be considered for prioritisation. I strongly agree.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Cases of covid-19 are now getting out of control in our prisons. In December, there were 75 cases per 1,000 in prison compared to 46 in the wider community. There are 87 outbreaks, across an estate of 170, in prisons in England and Wales. There have been reports of prisoners who have tested positive for coronavirus leaving cells and being taken to court, putting all at risk. In December, the total number of deaths in prison throughout the whole pandemic spiked by 50% in just one month. Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many prisoners and prison staff died after being infected by the coronavirus in the month of January?

[Robert Buckland]

I will furnish those precise figures to the right hon. Gentleman when they are finally available, which will be very shortly. May I deal with the general points that he makes? It is important to note that an outbreak is defined as any number of cases in excess of two in our prisons. Every case is regrettable, but it is important to put this in context: at the moment, as I speak, two thirds of the prison estate either has no outbreaks at all or outbreaks of fewer than 10 cases. That is an important qualification. Clearly, as a result of testing, which we have ramped up right across the estate, we are able to identify more asymptomatic prisoners, and we test prisoners before they go to court. Nobody who presents with symptoms should be presented at court anyway.

This work has been impressive. The quarantine compartmentalisation work that the right hon. Gentleman knows about continues, and I am confident from my daily briefings with Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service that everything is being done to control outbreaks in our prisons. It is not right, with respect to him, to say that this is out of control in our prisons. That, frankly, is an insult to the hard work that staff are doing every day to contain covid-19.