Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

What progress he has made on tackling the backlog of cases in HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

What steps he has taken to help tackle the backlog of criminal cases before the courts.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

What recent estimate he has made of the size of the backlog of cases before the criminal courts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

I do agree that timely justice is essential. In the magistrates courts, the outstanding caseload has already come down by about 50,000 cases since last summer, which is very welcome progress. In Crown courts, we are now getting through about 2,000 cases a week, which is about the same as it was before the pandemic. But we do need to go faster: the hon. Lady is right. I think the judiciary eased off listing a little bit in January, February and the early part March owing to the more recent lockdown. Now we are moving out of those restrictions, in phases, our expectation is that listing levels will go up again. We have certainly created the capacity to do that, with 290 jury courtrooms available. As listing levels increase, using the capacity we have created I expect the outstanding caseloads to come down.

[Mr Mohindra [V]]

This is an issue that is very close to the heart of many of my residents in South West Hertfordshire. How is the Department increasing use of remote hearings to ensure the safety of the people involved during the covid-19 outbreak?

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for a very prescient question. We have made a huge investment in IT and technology. We have purchased getting on for 10,000 laptops to enable remote working and video working. We have rolled out the cloud video platform on an expedited basis. As a result of that work, more than 20,000 hearings per week across all jurisdictions are now being held remotely. That is orders of magnitude higher than was the case before, and that is why we have managed to keep getting work done across so many parts of the jurisdiction when in many other countries around the world work has considerably slowed down or even stopped.