Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Attorney General.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

May I say what an honour it is to be at this Dispatch Box facing the next Prime Minister as she awaits her call from the palace? It is a true honour, although colleagues will have noticed that in her list of leadership priorities last night the Attorney General had absolutely nothing to say about tackling the epidemic of crime in our country or ending the culture of lawbreaking in our Government, both of which have flourished on her watch. What she did say last night, however, was that we need to

“shrink the size of the state”.

I ask the Attorney General a very simple question: in percentage terms, what size of staffing cuts does she plan to make to the Crown Prosecution Service, and what will that mean to the record backlogs that our courts currently face?

[The Attorney General]

I know that the right hon. Lady loves to degrade these question sessions to petty politics. I am not going to lower myself to her standards; I am here to talk about victims and what we are doing to secure justice for vulnerable people. I am very proud of the financial settlement that this Government have put into the CPS, increasing the number of prosecutors. Notably, in the past 12 months alone there have been 115 more RASSO-trained prosecutors in place to work specifically to support victims.