David Lammy
Main Page: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)Department Debates - View all David Lammy's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years ago)
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James Cartlidge
My right hon. Friend makes a good point and has significant experience as a lawyer himself. I can confirm that there is extra resource for the CPS in the spending review, and the Home Office and our Department work closely together on that question and will be looking at what more we can do to improve those processes.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
On 5 October, the Secretary of State said it would take up to 12 months to get the backlog down to pre-pandemic levels. Yet we know now, according to the Ministry of Justice’s own analysis, that the backlog may not return to those levels until 2025. Just this morning, he said it could take up to eight years. Was he mistaken when he said it would only take a year, or has it taken him a little longer to get on top of the Department?
James Cartlidge
On the contrary, I can confirm that what my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor actually said was that cases would start to stabilise. They are stabilising now, at around a 60,000 backlog, but we accept that that is still significant. I think what matters to our constituents, though, is not the size of the number of cases outstanding—though that is important—but how long their case is going to take. On timeliness, we are seeing a very significant improvement, because we are working at full capacity. In July, the Crown courts in this country sat more days and disposed of more cases in a single month than at any time since November 2018. We are making significant progress, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the additional investment in the spending review, which will ensure we can go even further.
Mr Lammy
I am glad to see the Minister come to the aid of the Secretary of State, but he has not answered whether it is a year, eight years or 2025. The Secretary of State told Sky News today that he did not recognise that there was a workforce crisis in the criminal justice system. The Lord Chancellor has got to get real. The workforce is beyond crisis: it is in end times. Criminal solicitors and barristers are leaving in droves, cases are up right across the country, they are stalled right across the country and nobody is available to take them. The Criminal Bar Association is threatening to strike. How does the Lord Chancellor expect to reduce the backlog if there is no one available to take on the cases? Holiday time is over. It is time to act, or let the system collapse.
James Cartlidge
It is quite extraordinary: 43 minutes ago in Bill Committee, the Labour party voted to keep clogging up our courts with immigration and asylum cases with almost no chance of success. Quite extraordinary. Those cases take up 180 days of court time. That means a High Court judge, and that is precious resource. That is why we are taking that measure. It just proves that when it comes to the backlog in the courts, Labour says one thing and does another.