Courts and Tribunals Bill

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats will be voting against the Bill, and we have tabled a reasoned amendment that sets out why we fundamentally disagree with the approach of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Courts Minister to tackling the Crown court backlog. Our views have been well aired in this place over the last few months, but today is an opportunity for us to lay out the reasons why the Bill should not progress in its current form.

Something that we agree on is that the current backlog is unacceptable, untenable and unsustainable. We agree with the Government that that is because of the historic and monumental failings of the previous Conservative Government, whose complacency and mismanagement of the justice system left the criminal justice system on the brink of collapse. It is a shameful legacy.

The backlog in our criminal courts now stands at 80,000. That disgraceful situation deprives victims and defendants of justice for years—cases are now being listed for the end of this decade. This has a huge impact on the quality of evidence, and it even causes victims to pull out of cases because so long has passed since the crime and they just want to move on with their lives. It also leaves defendants’ lives on pause while they await the opportunity to prove their innocence. The system as it stands fails everyone. Something must be done about this crisis, and it must be done now.

Sir Brian Leveson was clear in his report that the fundamental drivers of the ever-increasing backlog were systematic underfunding, the readiness of defence and prosecution teams, and the availability of witnesses, victims and defendants, but he did not identify juries as the cause of the problem. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of ineffective trials increased from 15% to 25%. In that time, the average court sitting time fell from 3.8 hours per sitting day to 3.2 hours. Juries are not the problem; inefficiencies are.

In my Crown court in Chichester, all cases were suspended for a fortnight in January because the heating system failed and it was too cold in the building. Across the country, there are stories of courts closing due to crumbling roofs, water pouring into courtrooms, gas leaks and general poor maintenance over many years. Juries are not the problem; crumbling infrastructure is.

[Dr Chambers]

I visited the Winchester courts recently and spoke to about a dozen barriers, who were all concerned about us taking a sledgehammer to jury trials, not only because they are a fundamental part of our justice system, but because doing so will not even help to clear the backlog, as jury trials are not the limiting factor. They reiterated that it is about defendants and prisoners getting to court on time, the number of sitting days and the crumbling infrastructure. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should listen to the professionals, who know what the problems are?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Joanna Hardy-Susskind put it well today, when she said:

“I have seen the adjournment of two rape trials this year. It’s only March. Nothing in Lammy’s proposed Bill would have saved the trial dates in either case. Nothing.”

Barristers across England and Wales are reporting delays to their cases because of the failed prisoner escort and custody services contracts—something I have asked the Justice Secretary about many times. These issues regularly cause cases to run late because the defendant has not been delivered on time from prison, or because there is nobody on site to bring them up from the holding cells. Juries are not the problem; Government contracts are the problem.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

I have been a civil and a criminal law practitioner. The civil courts are not that far from the criminal courts when it comes to delays, but there are no juries in the civil courts, so does the hon. Lady agree that the delays are due to a lack of investment?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention; I have also seen the amendment that his group has tabled, and I agree with that.

Trial by jury is deeply enshrined in our conscience and constitution, and it is respected all over the world.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the original clause 39 of Magna Carta has guaranteed an individual’s right to due process in the court for 800 years, and that trial by jury is at its heart? This Bill asks the right question but gives a reckless answer. There is no modelling or evidence to show that this move will reduce the backlog.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I agree with some of what my hon. Friend said. I do agree that trial by jury is one of the only parts of our justice system that is still actually trusted. The possibility of being tried by one’s peers is fundamental to a fair trial in this country. The Deputy Prime Minister himself recognised that point in the Lammy review in 2017, and then again during the pandemic when curtailing the right to a jury trial was proposed to deal with the increasing backlog.

[Emily Darlington]

I am trying to understand the hon. Lady’s point. Is she saying that we should now extend jury trial to all trials, or that we should keep the status quo? Is she saying that it is sacrosanct and so should in fact be extended? I am confused.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I am happy to make it absolutely clear for the hon. Member. If I was allowed to get on, I could make that point. Trial by jury is not the problem. We agree that there is a problem that needs to be solved, but curtailing the right to a jury trial will not achieve what the Government and the Opposition want: the backlog coming down.

Leveson’s report proposed a bench division with a judge and two magistrates. The Government have gone further and proposed a swift court with just one sitting judge. Did they choose to ignore Sir Brian Leveson’s proposal of a Crown court bench division with a judge and two magistrates because, although they agree—I think—that the lay element to a trial is an important part of the system, they know that they do not have enough magistrates and are likely to struggle to find enough willing to preside over lengthy cases? Does the Courts Minister really believe that defendants opt for a Crown court trial because they want their cases to be heard in a Crown court building—because of the facilities or because it might have better coffee—rather than because they want a trial by jury?

[Pam Cox]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I will make some progress.

If the Deputy Prime Minister and the Courts Minister believe that this is fundamentally the right thing to do practically and ideologically, why did it not feature in the Labour party manifesto? Like many Members, I take issue with the Deputy Prime Minister’s messaging around the Bill. He chose to describe defendants as “offenders”, rather than applying the principle of innocent until guilt is proven. He also described a case that carries a sentence of up to three years as akin to having a grazed knee and seeing a consultant. I think most of the public outside this building would argue that three years’ imprisonment is a life-changing sentence. If I were tried for a crime that I was arguing that I did not commit, I would like that to be in front of a jury of my peers.

I believe the Government are wasting severely limited political capital on something that will not shift the dial. They stated themselves that they expect all the measures in the Bill to show just a 5% decrease in the backlog by the end of this Parliament and a return to pre-covid backlog levels only in a decade.

Instead of these drastic changes, we are urging the Government to look at alternative options to reduce the Crown court backlog. We should look at measures that have been tried and tested before, such as those piloted during the pandemic to supercharge the Crown courts, when extended sitting hours allowed am and pm trials. Used in select courtrooms, that method can funnel through cases that have been stuck in the backlog for years. In the original pilots, the approach cleared 3.5 cases per courtroom each week, compared to fewer than one in courts operating standard hours. That is how we can begin to reduce the backlog without removing liberties that we should all hold as sacred. Will the Government please give consideration to the Liberal Democrat proposals, which would not only boost efficiencies in the Crown courts but would make the experience for jurors, victims and judges better, and could attract retired judges back into the system to preside over half-day cases?

Another glaring flaw in the Bill is that more serious cases will be heard in the magistrates court, where there is a higher income threshold to qualify for legal aid. Many more defendants who could be accused of crimes that carry sentences of up to 24 months will be unrepresented and defending themselves. That is very likely to drag out hearings, which will lower the overall savings that the Government claim to be making with these reforms. How will the Government respond when magistrates courts start pushing cases with longer sentences back to the Crown court as they struggle to absorb the additional work, as happened with the previous reform of magistrates’ sentencing powers?

The Government are also proposing to abolish the right of appeal from the magistrates court. Why does the Deputy Prime Minister believe that should be done when 42% of appeals from the magistrates court are successful? If the Government are willing to include an important clause on the presumption against parental responsibility in the Bill, why will they not extend the scope of the Bill to address the fundamental reforms needed in the broken family court system?

The Government’s proposals are opposed by the Criminal Bar Association, the chair of the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Four Bars, the Secret Barrister, Judge Rob Rinder, Jo Hamilton OBE, many Labour Members and 3,200 legal professionals, who have written to the Deputy Prime Minister today. If they will not listen to all those organisations and people who have spent their lives committed to making the criminal justice system, which has been poorly managed by successive Governments, as effective as possible for victims and defendants, who will they listen to?

I have a huge amount of respect for the Courts Minister and for the Deputy Prime Minister, which is why I am disappointed to be here making this speech. It is not too late for them to change course.

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[Lloyd Hatton]

I completely accept that there have been successes in some parts of the country, including in Liverpool, but that is not the case elsewhere, which is why a much wider package of structural reforms is essential. I firmly believe, in response to that point, that we must pull every lever at our disposal to stabilise the system and begin to turn the corner on the rising backlog in the Crown court. We need transformative change, backed up by investment and modernisation, to fix the problem. That is not optional; it is essential. That is why, in my view, the reforms in the Bill form a coherent package designed to deliver system-wide change. We cannot indulge in a game of pick and mix and simply implement the measures that we prefer. We must understand that, to relieve the scale of pressure currently facing the Crown courts and the wider criminal justice system, this Bill must make its way through this place.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

If the hon. Gentleman believes that we should not have a pick and mix approach to Sir Brian Leveson’s proposals, why does he think that the Government have chosen only some of the measures and not others?

[Lloyd Hatton]

The Government can put certain measures into one piece of primary legislation, but there could be others down the line to pick up the recommendations of the review.

We must remember that magistrates, prison and probation officers and police officers will not thank us if we preside over an unreformed system in which Crown courts are allowed to crumble and backlogs are allowed to balloon for years to come. Every aspect of reform is required, otherwise cutting the backlogs and providing more timely justice will never be achieved, and we in this place will have done too little.

Finally, I add my voice to the chorus of parliamentarians who have been speaking up for victims who have so far been failed by the status quo. At the heart of the criminal justice system are people waiting for justice—waiting for wrongs to be put right, for fairness, for their day in court and for closure.

The progressive case for court reform is not a technocratic exercise in efficiency; it is a fundamental argument about how our legal institutions serve the British people, because when the criminal justice system breaks down, it is the most vulnerable who always pay the highest price. We must not lose sight of that today. We can either manage the slow decline of our courts, watching as victims are neglected and abandoned, and public confidence drains away, or we can support the Bill and modernise and repair the system so that justice is delivered quickly and fairly. I enthusiastically choose the latter option.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Sackman]

Q The Government are seeking to take forward your proposal, in the independent review of the criminal courts, on the introduction of a permission test for appeals from the magistrates courts, rather than what is currently the case, which is an automatic right of appeal. What was the rationale behind your recommendation? Why do you see it as both a proportionate and a fair response to the current need for reform?

Sir Brian Leveson: The reason why I started to think about that was that I have long been of the view that it would be valuable, as technology has improved, to record magistrates court proceedings—in other words, to have a record of what is said in the magistrates courts. Once one is doing that, there is no reason why one should not introduce the same sort of approach to appeals as the one used in the Crown court and the Court of Appeal criminal division.

I was particularly impressed—I use the word impressed, but I was concerned—by an argument that I heard that many minor sexual assaults that were dealt with in the magistrates courts or the youth courts, which could include rape, almost automatically went to appeal to the Crown court, on the basis that the victim would not turn up the second time and be prepared to go through the whole process again. That is a serious problem. To require victims to go through the experience of giving evidence and being cross-examined twice is unfair on them. Everybody needs to be able to move on with their lives, and that is victims and defendants as well.

Although I have talked about defendants gaming the system, I do not ignore defendants who are determined to pursue a not guilty plea because they do not feel they have done anything wrong, but whose lives are on hold for years until their trials happen. I had an example of a young man who was at university and charged with rape. His university career is long since gone, and he could not get a job because he had to tell potential employers, “I’m due to be tried for rape.” The system has to change. That is what I believe, but of course it is for you to decide whether it does.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Q Hello, Sir Brian. My name is Jess Brown-Fuller. I am the MP for Chichester and the justice spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. I will rattle through a couple of questions so that other Members get a chance to ask theirs. As part of your review, did you look at the concept of rape and serious sexual offences courts? If you did, why did they not form a basis of your recommendations?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is easily answered: there are just too many of them. My view is that nobody should be a circuit judge unless they are capable of trying serious sexual crime—nobody. The empathy required to deal with victims is not just restricted to rape and serious sexual crimes. The make-up of cases going to the Crown court has changed over the last 10 years, so what might have been a good idea 10 or 15 years ago when there were fewer such cases does not cut it now. There are just too many cases, and that is why I did not recommend a specialist rape court.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Do you believe that the two parts of the review were commissioned in the right order?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is an interesting question. I have long since believed that there needed to be radical change. The fact is that the backlog went up in the 12 months since I was appointed in December 2024—sorry, this will be a longish answer. You would have thought that everybody would be working like mad to demonstrate that efficiency could bring the backlog down over the year following my appointment. Not only did the backlog not go down, but it went up higher than the highest projection that the Ministry had.

I have always been of the view that efficiency alone would not do it, and you were going to have to look at legislative change. If you were going to look at legislative change, it was important that you all had the chance to consider that as soon as possible, so I was perfectly content to deal with policy first and efficiency afterwards, on the basis that by the time you got around to dealing with it, you would have both reports anyway and you could look at everything together; I hope you have.

[The Chair]

I want to get three more people in, so pithy questions and pithy answers, please.

Sir Brian Leveson: I am sorry.

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[Sarah Sackman]

Thank you.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you to the panel for coming. Sorry to use your words, Claire, but I am going to quote from the letter that you sent to the Prime Minister. You said that victims

“also stress important safeguards: tackling the lack of diversity on the bench, and ensuring judges are robustly trained in the dynamics of abuse and trauma.”

You know that over many years many different parliamentarians have tried to legislate to ensure that everyone in the judiciary has mandatory training on those important safeguards. You also know that we are always told that, because the judiciary is independent, we cannot legislate to mandate that training. What would you like to see in the Bill to ensure the important safeguards that victims have reflected to you?

Claire Waxman: I have made that point for years, regardless of these reforms. We have to improve and get reassurance around judicial training, including training on cultural competency, on understanding bias and prejudice and on the dynamics of abuse. We still see issues around coercive control, post-separation abuse and stalking. I need to be reassured that judges are being trained to the level that will give assurances to victims and to myself that they understand what is coming in front of them. We need reassurance from Government on that. I would suggest more investment in judicial training. We saw, over years—Vera will remember more than me when it happened—that the training on rape went down from three days to two days for judges. That was meant to be a temporary measure; I do not think it has gone back up. We need to make sure that we have good, robust training for judiciary and magistrates.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you. How do the victims that you speak to and represent feel about the fact that these legislative reforms will not necessarily move the dial until potentially 2035, when we could see the backlog down to pre-covid levels?

Claire Waxman: People in the criminal justice system need to move ahead with the efficiency measures. We need to move ahead with that so that we can start to see some of the adjournments not happening, better listing and so on. Of course, it is a desperate state. Just yesterday I spoke to a male victim of child sex abuse. He has been in the system since 2021 and in the court system for two years. He thought that he was giving evidence in the coming weeks. That has been adjourned and he has been asked his availability for 2027, 2028 and 2029. He is going to withdraw. I think Sir Brian said it—looking at structural reform came first because we know that the efficiency measures are not going to bring the backlog down quickly enough. We need to do everything together as a package of measures and we need to move ahead.

[Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)]

Good morning, all. I welcome your work and the support that you offer victims—all of you, in what you have been doing. I am sure there is cross-party support for that in the room this morning. Do you think the changes in the Bill will improve the confidence of victims that, when they report crimes, they will receive justice more swiftly than they currently do and, more importantly, that the changes will also encourage more brave victims to come forward and report crimes?

Claire Waxman: There are a lot of good measures in the Bill that, if delivered and implemented well and with important safeguards, should have positive impacts for victims. We are removing appropriate cases from the Crown court, easing the burden there, and limiting the right to elect for a Crown court trial. By the way, victims view that right as an injustice. They feel that power and control is being given to the defendant, knowing full well that there is a chance they will come out of the process or that their evidence will be impacted over the years. That is something that victims regularly talk to me about. The measures around the automatic right to appeal and to make the magistrates a court of record will open up transparency in the courts and hopefully stop victims having to be called back in for a rehearing. That has devastating impacts; you cannot overestimate what it does to a victim when they think that they have gone through the process of giving evidence, and then they have to come in again.

If all those things ease the pressure and burden on the Crown court, that will give reassurance and confidence to victims who are thinking about whether to stay in the process currently. The measures Katrin talked about—putting in important safeguards around the cross-examination of rape victims—are so important. Vera and I have worked on this since 2019, because of section 41, past sexual history, and issues around cross-examination and compensation claims. That is a financial motive used to undermine the credibility of victims. Victims come out of the system and often say, “I will never report again,” but they tell their friends and families about their experiences, and that deters people and erodes public trust and confidence.

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[Dr Mullan]

indicated dissent.

Dame Vera Baird: I see Kieran shaking his head, but there is no other way. There is a limited opportunity to give priority to cases. Obviously a very important point is whether the defendant is in custody. Most rape defendants are not in custody, because it is a “one word against the other” case, so they cannot be given any real priority for that reason. We end up very regularly with cases that took as long as Charlotte’s. That is really awful for a large number of victims. It also gives very little to the people who want this right: 64% of people who elect for trial plead guilty before they get to trial. You have to ask why they are electing for trial if they are going to plead guilty, but they have blocked up the jury list all of that time. This is about freeing up the jury list.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q In the previous panel, Sir Brian asked how we could model something that had never been trialled. As a panel, would you support a pilot of what the Government are suggesting, so we can take the qualitative data and see whether it makes a fundamental difference, or we should go now and not, for example, put a sunset clause in?

[The Chair]

Can you respond briefly, please? I want to get Paulette in.

Claire Waxman: I can answer very quickly. It is a very good question, but unfortunately I think we have moved past the point at which we can pilot, because of where we are heading with the trajectory of the Crown court—the increase in the wait lists and how long victims are waiting. Modelling is very difficult, but we should not get stuck on percentages. The Government are saying around 20%, and the Institute for Government has now corrected its figures from 2% up to, I think, 9% or higher—to 15%. It is around the direction of travel and recognising that we have an overburdened Crown court. We need to move things out of the process.

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[Sarah Sackman]

Q I have one more question. It picks up on something that you said, Charlotte, but I am happy for others to comment if they have a view.

As you have heard from previous witnesses, the primary thrust behind the Government’s measures in the Bill is to address the unacceptable delays that you have all described. However, we also have a responsibility to build back a better system. One choice that the Government made was to remove the right to elect, so that it is the court that allocates cases to the appropriate venue. We think that that makes things quicker and more efficient, but there is also a normative idea behind it that it is the court that should triage cases; you mentioned that in your remarks, Charlotte. What is your view on that reform? From a victim’s perspective, do you see sense in it, or not?

Charlotte Meijer: Definitely. Throughout the system, the victim is always on the back foot. You get told a day later—or, depending on the service that you receive, two days, three days, four days or a month later—what has gone on, but the perpetrator always knows exactly what goes on, because they have to be present and able to make decisions. Why is the perpetrator the one who can make these decisions? It makes it feel like they are in control, and that, as a victim, you are running behind to catch up.

That was exactly the case for me when I found out that he had selected a court. All of a sudden, I got a call to say, “Your perpetrator has picked a magistrates court, so that is now what will happen.” I had no choice in it. I had already had no choice for three years when he was controlling me; I had no choice for three years when he was raping me; and now I had no choice for two and a half or three years when I was in the system.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you all for being here; I am very grateful to you for coming to give evidence to the Committee. Farah, you mentioned the presumption against parental responsibility. I agree that that is a really important step that the Labour Government are taking, but the rest of the family court process is currently out of this Bill’s scope. Could anything fundamental be introduced into this Bill to make the experience better for victims, who often go down a twin-track approach through the criminal courts and family courts?

Farah Nazeer: Thank you for the question. There are a few things around presumption that could make a big difference. One is training for the entirety of the court staff, because the stories that we hear and the experiences that we support women and children through are frankly appalling. The staff are not trauma-informed and there is no understanding of what a victim is going through. The courts are weaponised and survivors are brought back to the courts repeatedly. It is an appalling process. No policy area that you work on at Women’s Aid is a picnic, but this is the worst. People describe the trauma that they go through in the family courts as worse than the trauma that they endured through the abuse that they experienced.

One thing is for the court system to understand domestic abuse, understand sexual violence, understand coercive control and be trauma-informed. That means having processes in which a survivor knows what is happening, understands what the next steps are and is supported through the system, and having separate places where a survivor can be. Some of it is quite basic, but it is really important to improving the survivor experience.

Another thing is the regulation of experts. We often have unregulated experts coming into the family courts to provide expertise and advice to the judge on what is happening in a relationship. You would not have unregulated experts in any safeguarding context; it is absolutely wild that you would have that. One thing we really want to see is regulated experts: psychiatrists and psychologists who are regulated by the appropriate body, rather than, seemingly, people who are just not.

The last thing that I want to focus on is the concept of parental alienation, which is often invoked in family courts. It is a concept that is not evidenced and is not recognised in psychiatric or medical practice, but it is often invoked as a concept to defend against claims of domestic abuse. What needs to happen is a child’s safety being put at the heart of the decision by a regulated expert, by a trained judge. If you get that right, you immediately improve the experience for survivors and children, and you improve the safeguarding around survivors and children. Those three things are absolutely critical to changing the culture and the experience and to ensuring safety.

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for your testimony so far and for your bravery. Morwenna, you mentioned that you waited two and a half years before your court date. My apologies for going into the detail, but can you go through the stresses and strains of that wait and its impacts on your life and possibly on other victims as well?

Morwenna Loughman: Absolutely. One thing that kept me going—I was so close to pulling out multiple times—was that I had this sense that he had done it before. In fact, what I was later told—it was not admissible, but under the Bill it would become admissible—was that he had broken his ex-partner’s leg repeatedly and raped her as well. His defence barrister stood in front of the judge, the jury and me, and said, “This man has never hurt a woman.” Given that this man was out on bail and repeatedly breaching his bail conditions, brutal is the word. I cannot overstate the impact that that has on victims. It was devastating. I did not look people in the eye for two years. I wore a hat everywhere I went so I could hide my face, because he could have been anywhere. I had to move out of my home. My home became a crime scene. I lost my job. It was daily torture. I echo what Natalie Fleet said the other week in the House of Commons: that the one thing worse than being raped is waiting four years or more to hear if people actually believe you.

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[The Chair]

Jess, I cut you off earlier—forgive me.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I appreciate that—thank you. It was a question for you, Charlotte, about the shock that you experienced when you tried to request the sentencing remarks. Is that correct? You were quoted £20,000 and you found that people trying to get their court transcripts generally were being quoted incredibly high prices. As you mentioned, the Government have moved on that, so sentencing remarks will be available from spring next year. We are continuing to try to push that further: we do not think that sentencing remarks often tell the entire story.

There is an amendment that is going to the House of Commons today that is specifically about bail decisions and the route to verdict that juries are presented with before they go away to deliberate. Do you agree that sentencing remarks are only part of the journey that we need to be on, and that we need to be quite ambitious in ensuring victims have all the evidence in their own case, so they can start to move on and process?

Charlotte Meijer: Yes, absolutely. My campaign for all transcripts to be made available very quickly was shut down, so I have gone for little bits at a time. Sentencing remarks are an amazing change. At first, that was just for rape victims; now it is for all victims, which is great. However, if we look at RASSO cases, only 2% get a guilty verdict, so only 2% will get the free sentencing remarks. There needs to be something for the 98%.

The next thing that I have been campaigning for is the judge’s summing up, now the route to verdict, which is incredibly important. I am a not guilty verdict case, so I would not get my sentencing remarks either. It is about being able to understand. If we take that further, I believe the whole case should be available free, as it is in many other countries, or for a couple of pounds in administration costs. If we are taking it a bit at a time, the next bit would be, as you say, bail conditions and the route to verdict, to understand how someone got to that decision. That is all to aid people to understand what happened and process it a little better.

[Amanda Hack]

Q Thank you for sharing your experiences. It has been incredibly powerful. Jade Blue, you said that change is not optional—we need to reduce the suffering. That has resonated with me. We need to create a system that is bearable. As victims—and you have obviously experienced trials at different places in the system—do you feel that these reforms would have made the system bearable? Is there anything specific in the reforms that you could point to?

Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott: I guess there is the hope of fewer adjournments and fewer last-minute changes, which we hear about quite a lot. Any measure that could increase capacity for these kinds of cases is a measure we could get behind. Just having that—being able to plan your life and have reassurances that it will be going ahead—is important.

In the past, one of us mentioned floating trials for rape cases, which is, quite frankly, just absurd. Being able to have dedicated time to ensure that these cases do not become floating trials and that there is capacity for them to be seen in a prompt and timely manner would be welcome.

Morwenna Loughman: The first time my trial was listed, unbeknown to me and the rest of my family, it was listed as a floating trial, which means that two or more cases—in this instance, rape cases—are scheduled for the same time, on the same date and in the same court, on the assumption that at least two of you will drop over the course because it is so harrowing and re-traumatising. That is why mine got delayed right at the last minute.

We have talked a lot about the education of judges, which is absolutely essential, but we must also consider the education of juries. As I have said, they are not bastions of infallibility. The man who raped me was convicted. He was found guilty, but not unanimously. He was sentenced to 15 years, which gives an indication as to the level of injury that I sustained.

Two members of the jury found him not guilty and acquitted him of all charges. It was a majority vote; there was no unanimity, and it took them three and a half days to deliberate, even though I had received 48 injuries and he was arrested on the scene. I could go on about the extenuating circumstances. In every sense, how did it take them three and a half days to not even conclusively decide that this man had raped me?

Charlotte Meijer: I will add to that. The removal in the Bill of the defendant’s right to elect will make the victim feel empowered, knowing that the perpetrator is not in control. As I have said, there is the recording of magistrates courts, and the Bill is our hope that the waiting time will go down. That is the core reason why we are doing this. The system cannot get any worse than it is, so the waiting going down will be a significant change.

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[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q My question is to Morwenna, although the rest of the panel might be able to feed in. Morwenna, you spoke about the impact of the adjournment of your case. I do not underestimate how re-traumatising that is: you build yourself up to the day when you think you will be in court, only to be told that that will not happen. I think you mentioned that that happened twice.

Morwenna Loughman: Yes.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

You also spoke about the concept of floating cases. Were you told beforehand that your case had been listed as a floating case? The reason I ask is that the legislation does not address how many adjournments we have. There is no mechanism in the legislation—I am happy to be corrected by the Minister—to address how often cases are adjourned. Listing officers will continue to list floating cases because they know that so many victims drop out of the process, or the CPS comes back and says that it does not have enough evidence to convict, and so on.

Did you have an ISVA supporting you through the process? Were you communicated with well enough? Did you know that your case could fall at that final hurdle? The most important thing is what victims such as yourselves would like to see from that process to understand that your cases could get adjourned, were they listed as floating cases.

Morwenna Loughman: I was never told that that was a possibility. Again, that fundamental lack of understanding points to a system weighted against the victim and against the complainant. You are hermetically sealed off from a system that has been designed to dismiss and re-silence you because there is this sense that you need help, or might seek help, and to be told what to say on the stand. I would not have been there for any reason other than that I had been raped, but there was this sense that I needed to be kept at arm’s length from the system. If this Bill can change how the whole justice process is seen, that is absolutely what we should be fighting for.

[The Chair]

I will call the Minister and Alex, and try to squeeze them both in the time.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Sackman]

Q We both agree that we need investment. We agree that we need to do a major drive on efficiency and the Government are doing that. Sir Brian’s team concluded that both those things would not be enough to bring down the backlog. My question to the Bar is, “What do you know that Sir Brian’s team does not?”

Kirsty Brimelow: We know, operationally, what works. You will hear some more of that from the circuit leaders who are giving evidence. I have pointed to Woolwich as an example in 2023. We are agreed on the fact that we need to reduce delays. We focus on, “Where are the delays happening?” If we are serious about reducing them, we need to look at where they are happening.

You have heard a lot from victims of rape this morning. It should be made clear to them that the delays are weighted pre-court, so the median average that a rape victim is waiting is happening in the investigation stage and the charge stage—it is around two years. The median average currently from receipt in Crown court to completion is around a year. That is still too long, but we need to focus, therefore, on what is happening with the CPS and what is happening on investigation.

Charlotte Nichols was mentioned this morning by Vera Baird. In her case, she had more than two years waiting before getting to court. When it got to court, it was eight and a half months to conclude, so it is important to look at where the problem is and focus there.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Q Thank you both very much for being here—we really appreciate your time. What effect could the Bill’s proposed changes to jury trials have on newly qualified legal professionals, who quite often cut their teeth on jury trials with lesser sentences? Also, at the other end of the profession, have you done any polling or modelling to see whether this could impact the number of legal professionals staying in the profession?

Kirsty Brimelow: We have heard—and I agree with this—that we already have the data, and I believe some more data is coming over the next weeks. We already have the data to show that a quarter of King’s counsel have now left working in publicly funded work. As I have said, we have the retention back on our junior Bar, which is very positive after the investment in legal aid, but we need the legal aid promise to come through quickly to keep that retention, and hopefully attract back the KCs.

However, if jury trials are removed for those cases where juniors are currently very much cutting their teeth—they are doing those trials in their early years of practice before a jury—it may well be a disincentive to doing criminal law. From my own experience of coming from a mixed, publicly funded chambers—we do not do private cases, but legal aid cases across all the jurisdictions—there is always that persuasion with our young barristers as to what area of law they will go into. The persuasion that lands is, “You will have the advocacy with the jury trial.”

If they do not have that advocacy, my fear is that we will lose our junior practitioners, who are very important, or we could end up with very junior practitioners whose first jury trial may have a level of seriousness beyond their ability, which again impacts on the quality of justice, and there could be a potential increase in miscarriages of justice.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you. The victims in the previous session spoke about a necessary change in culture in the criminal system, which I think is a shared view across all the parties represented today. Can either of you see anything in the legislation before us that will provide that change in culture?

Kirsty Brimelow: I am going to hand over to Riel on this. We support much of the reform from clause 8 onwards, on which I will hand over to her. We are all absolutely there to make improvements; no system is perfect, and the criminal justice system absolutely is not. We are there ready to support the reforms, and we are very experienced in bringing in reforms. Some of the issues I heard spoken of this morning included clearly terrible communication issues, where people were not informed as to what was going on, and they should be fairly easy to sort out.

Also, we very much support the idea that there is a lawyer advising complainants, which is another proposal that has been put forward by the Government. We support that because complainants often get wrong information from NGOs or the police—doing their best—about what might be happening, and what might happen to them in court. That, in itself, can cause them to be anxious about what might happen, and it can contribute to the attrition rate. We have always had an issue with an attrition rate in sexual offences cases, and each time we need to look at why that is, so we welcome any proposals. I will hand over to Riel.

[The Chair]

We have a very limited amount of time, but please come in, Riel.

Riel Karmy-Jones: In terms of the culture, all the things that were spoken about this morning have no relevance, in a sense, to jury trial. Juries are in the best possible position to consider the situation that victims are in; they are more likely to have someone who really understands, who is from the community and who may have some experience themselves of what the victim has gone through, or to know someone who has.

To change the culture, some of which I do not really recognise—it may be slightly older than the way things have progressed now—we would firmly recommend creating a specialist sexual/domestic abuse court. We would add to that by saying there should be specific training for the judges and jury—the jury could have a short period of training—and we would say that the prosecution and the defence need to be qualified or accredited advocates to deal with this sort of work. One of the problems we have at the moment is that the prosecution are accredited, but the defence are not, so questions coming from the defence are not as properly informed by the training that they could receive. Specialist court facilities, aimed at the comfort and safety of complainants, accommodating special measures, are really important, because at the moment we have victims in terrible rooms, with the ceilings coming down and water leaking through, and having to share loos, potentially with other witnesses in the case, risking coming across defendants in the court building.

We need to have stricter time limits on case preparation, and more active case management, and we suggest a national protocol on the approach to third-party material and the review of third-party material, and disclosure with strict time limits applicable to mirror the service of the case—also, fixed trial dates.

One of the issues that complainants in sexual and domestic violence cases have to contend with is that the defendant is often on bail. That is why they get shunted to the end of the line, because we have custody time limits that apply to custody cases. We need to consider a mechanism to give priority to these very important cases, and we think that a specialist domestic abuse court could do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you all for being here today and providing evidence to the Committee. Can any of you outline the reasons why Crown court hearing time has dropped to an average of 3.2 hours per sitting day? Is that drop anything to do with jury trials?

Claire Davies: I think we would all agree that it is nothing to do with jury trials. What is happening is that, due to a lack of sitting days, judges are having to deal with more administrative matters and other hearings before they begin a trial, if of course any of those are in custody. If there is a delay—they are not always delayed, of course—that pushes matters back. A trial will take longer, and they do not have the whole day available to them. They do not have 10 am till 4.30 pm, which is a court sitting day; they get only part of that day. That is what is eating into the hours—or it is one of the reasons.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you. At some point, I would love to talk you through my amendments, which suggest fundamental reforms but not by curtailing the right to a jury trial. This is probably quite a simple question, which will mean that we can move on, but do you believe that the Crown court backlog could be fixed without reforms to jury trials?

Caroline Goodwin: Yes, I do. As I have pointed out, you have to allow us the opportunity to put in place very key and significant changes. Frankly, senior judges have already identified that they would enable us to get through this backlog.

In addition, the investigative stage needs to be got hold of and have a coach and horses driven through it. One of the big complaints that we have been hearing about today—it is a terrible complaint, when one thinks about it—is about the time it takes from investigation stage through to Crown court and the final determination with a jury. All those things could be addressed with efficiencies, which do not mean that you have to remove the right to a jury trial. Let us focus on those.

Let me make it clear that it is very commendable that this large investment has been put in, but it brings us back to where we ought to have been after the last 10 years, in which we have suffered significant cuts. There is a will from the judiciary and practitioners; we just have to be able to make it work. You have experienced judges telling you, “I need blitz courts. I need more courts,” so let us open them, staff them, resource them and make them work.

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

Q My question concerns appeals. I am looking to see whether there is synergy here. Across your regions, 1% of cases that come from magistrates are appealed, so, accepting that the magistrates system is working, why do you not accept the principle of extending magistrates’ sentencing powers—as we have done in the past from six months to 12 months—from 12 months to three years?

Claire Davies: It is 18 months. The difficulty is the percentage of appeals against conviction, because we take a slightly different approach in relation to appeals against sentence. With appeals against conviction, the success rate is something like 40%. I understand that there is no data that demonstrates whether that is because witnesses do not attend the retrial hearing or simply because a wrong decision was reached in the lower courts. What concerns me is when you have the chair of the Magistrates’ Association giving evidence before the Select Committee that he would like the right of appeal retained.

There are errors and mistakes made, but if the length of sentence is extended, it will potentially increase that risk. The other difficulty that follows is that the number of those who qualify for legal aid will reduce, which means that they will not have access to legal advice as to whether they should be appealing or not, and if restrictions are brought in on the basis on which you can appeal, they will not be adequately equipped to launch what should perhaps be a successful appeal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

Thank you, Claire, for sharing such a powerful testimony. I think I first met you during a Westminster Hall debate, which was called by your tireless and fearless MP Marie Tidball, the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge. Your testimony is compelling and it is why we are bringing forward the provision in clause 17 of the Bill to repeal the presumption of parental contact. We know that will not protect every single child, but it does send quite an important message about what we in Parliament say, which is that the courts should always have at the forefront of their minds the best interests of the child, and that alone. I just want to say thank you.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you, Claire. Can I just acknowledge that children who are yet to go through the family courts are safer because of you and your tireless campaigning over many years? I hope you can hold that close as you go on. I believe that all campaigners like you, who never fight for themselves, are fighting for the next generation—the job is never done. My question to you is: what is the next step? What would you like to see in legislation going forward, especially in our family courts, to protect more children from harm?

Claire Throssell: What I would like to see moving forward is an understanding of what it looks like without presumption of contact; what good practice looks like; understanding trauma; understanding what coercive control is; understanding emotional abuse. We all understand physical abuse—it is there; we see it. What we do not understand is the emotional abuse and the scars that we carry. We must always look from the position of actually seeing a child, hearing a child, believing a child, protecting a child, and we must go from this basis. We must use the legislation that we have in the Domestic Abuse Act. We know that it is not being used in courts. We must see children as victims in their own right of this crime. We must accept children as victims in their own right of this crime, and we must take away the fact that we are always trying to prove the crime that has been committed against us.

Domestic abuse is a crime, so why is it that when we go into family courts we are ripped apart by barristers? Why is it that a crime has been committed against us, but we are always the ones who have to prove it has been committed, and by whom? Why do we have to go into a court, when we have committed no crime, and stand up and be humiliated in order to fight for our children? Why do we have to do that alone?

With any other crime, the onus is on the police to prove that a crime has been committed and by whom, and then sentencing is carried out accordingly, but in a family court, the person who has had the crime committed against them time and again has to prove that that has happened. We are not believed automatically, and we are not supported automatically. There should be special measures in family courts to help see the child, like in the Pathfinder courts, but it is not just about seeing the child; it is about hearing them, believing them, supporting them, and letting perpetrators of abuse know that it will not be accepted and that we are going to take action, protect that child and always presume the unthinkable.

[Matt Bishop]

Q It is good to see you again, Claire. I echo everyone else’s comments about your very powerful evidence. You will remember that the last time you attended a debate in the Chamber, certain Opposition Members commented—we have heard comments and suggestions even today—that sometimes mistakes happen and both parents should have the right to their children at all times, but do you agree that this is an opportunity, and that the Government and, in fact, all parliamentarians should be doing everything we can to make sure that the 68 does not go to 69? I would rather that we make a mistake and the child survives than make a mistake where a child dies. Do you agree?

Claire Throssell: Absolutely—I agree with that 100%. It comes back to the fact that we must not presume that children are safe. We must not presume that children are not going to lose their lives, because perpetrators of abuse manipulate, they lie, they turn it around and they use DARVO—everything is always everybody else’s fault, and their voice is always louder than the child’s. You have an opportunity now to change that. You have the opportunity to make sure that no other child has to use their voice and say to a fireman, a police officer or a doctor, “My dad did this, and he did it on purpose.” No other boy should have to have a dying testimony and believe that he saved the life of his brother, because I never told him differently. Mistakes are not good enough. Sixty-eight mistakes is a national disgrace, and in 2026, there should be no more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Other Committee members want to come in, but I want to ask you about fairness and, importantly, the perceived fairness and confidence that communities have in the system. On my visit to Toronto, it struck me what a diverse city it is. I believe that 50% of the residents of greater Toronto were born outside Canada. Is that something that you measure? Can you help the Committee understand the confidence that the public has in judge-alone trials?

Doug Downey: There are two parts to that. First, clearly, people are choosing judge-alone. On its own, the fact that the accused are choosing judge-alone speaks to the confidence they have in that system. There have been studies, such as the national justice survey in 2023 and 2025. Half the respondents to those studies indicated that they are moderately to very confident that our criminal justice system is fair to all people, and more than half—59%, to be exact—reported being moderately to very confident that the criminal justice system is accessible to all people. That is a fairly high number for people who are experiencing the system or know people who are experiencing the system.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you, Mr Downey, for your time today. I profess my ignorance of the Canadian justice system—it will stay with me forever that I do not know exactly how it works. Is the lay element in your criminal courts just 5% of all criminal cases?

Doug Downey: Are you talking about the non-lawyers who are hearing—

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Yes.

Doug Downey: We have in the Ontario Court of Justice what we call a lay bench—the justices of the peace. They do a lot of the bail hearings and a lot of the provincial offences—traffic and that sort of thing. That is where the lay bench resides, but the trials are not done by the justices of the peace when it comes to criminal matters; they are done by judges who are appointed, with a minimum of 10 years’ experience and quite often more than that.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q That is helpful. What sentence can a judge sitting alone give, and are there particular cases that will be heard with a jury?

Doug Downey: It is a great range. Let me answer that in reverse, if I may. The most significant matters, such as murder and treason, will default to a jury, but if the Crown agrees with the accused, they can move it to judge-alone. That generally is not the case—it generally stays where it is—but they can. For the balance of matters, such as serious sexual assaults, it is not directly based on what the consequence might be; it is a class of cases that we call hybrid and I think you call either-way cases, where an individual can make an election to move into the superior court and, by consequence, get a jury, but generally they do not do that.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I have a quick follow-up question, based on your earlier comments. Do you believe that a large part of the confidence in the Canadian model is the right to elect?

Doug Downey: I think so. The right to elect is a feature, but I do not think there would be any less confidence if they were not given that right, simply because the default would probably be with jury, but that would become very inefficient for us.

[Tristan Osborne]

Q My question concerns the potential issue of judges being identified and targeted because they are dealing with cases at a high level. Clearly, in your situation, judges are dealing with high-level cases and sentences. Have you seen any evidence that judges are particularly targeted if they hand down higher sentences?

Doug Downey: I think we are seeing, around the world, a heightened level of concern about individuals taking things into their own hands, so court security is very important to me. Judicial security is something that we have put a lot of effort into.

As for whether it happens because of a sentence, I cannot say with confidence that that is the driver. I think our societies are becoming more vitriolic, and that is what we need to guard against in protecting individuals. But if an individual judge is presiding anyway, I am not sure that they are going to attract more attention as a result of whether or not there is a jury.

To be honest, the nice thing about judges is that we get written reasons why things happen. In Canada it is very different from the United States: the jurors are not allowed to be debriefed afterwards in a public way. I do not know whether that is the case in Britain, but that provides a little bit of anonymity and protection against people drawing attention to themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Coupled with the procedural safeguards—things like the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and what have you, which we all think are a good thing—that driver of demand is not going away. Unlike covid, which thankfully has dissipated, it is now a permanent feature of our criminal justice system, I take it.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. We sometimes get better at what we do with it and I suppose the innovations become better, which may enable us to interrogate devices quicker. We hope that will come in time and we invest in the technology to do that, but the reality is that we live in a digital age. That goes across the board for us all.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you for being here. Your police officers are at the coalface. They often experience these adjournments and see victims let down at the final hurdle when they are about to have their day in court. What is your assessment of why cases are so often adjourned in our Crown courts?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I think there are multiple reasons. There are people who are far better qualified to give you evidence on that; undoubtedly you will have spoken to defence lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service, who can probably give you some really good evidence.

There are a whole host of reasons why cases are adjourned. Sometimes it is evidence, sometimes it is witnesses and victims, sometimes it is disclosure, sometimes it is court time—the reasons are multiple, but ultimately victims and witnesses are suffering as a consequence. My witness care units then have to pick up the conversations with those victims and witnesses to prepare them, hoping to keep them on board and confident enough in the criminal justice system to give evidence at a future date.

[Matt Bishop]

Q Thank you for being here, Chief Constable. Before I ask my question, I should declare that I worked as a serving officer for three police forces across the country.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Respect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you all for being here. Mr Goldstone, Liverpool is often held as a bastion of good practice in the criminal justice system, but Sir Brian Leveson said this morning that we should not necessarily use it as an example because of the very unique set-up there. Do you agree with Sir Brian’s assessment that Liverpool’s set-up cannot be emulated in other places across the country?

Clement Goldstone: I think that many of the efficiencies that Liverpool has created can be replicated across the country, because many efficiencies stem from positive leadership and proactive engagement. In a way, it is much more difficult to achieve those efficiencies with a larger court centre than with a centre where there are only two judges. There really is a limit to what you can do if you are running a two-judge court, but in the larger courts I believe that there is far more room for efficiency than is perhaps readily assumed.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you; that is helpful. This is a question for all of you: what risks do you perceive arising from the proposed removal of the automatic right to appeal from the magistrates to the Crown? Do you believe that this right of appeal is currently being abused?

Sir Richard Henriques: I see no evidence at all that it is being abused. Sir Brian thinks that there should be an application for leave to appeal, as there is between the Crown court and the Court of Appeal. It is finely balanced, in my view.

With respect to the perfectly good question, I think we need to look at the bigger picture here. Sir Brian’s work is phenomenal—if anyone apart from Lord Burnett has read every word of it, they have done extremely well—but it would conceivably create more communications and more work, and it would not necessarily achieve a great deal, as I think that only 2% of cases are appealed. While it is a very interesting dilemma, I have not given it a huge amount of thought myself.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Lord Burnett, would you say the same?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I was going to make the observation that Sir Richard just made about the very low level of appeals from the magistrates court to the Crown court, which is something of a tribute to our magistracy. It really is a very low level, so I do not personally see this as a big problem.

You asked about risk; one of the reasons why the current system exists is that the magistrates court is not a court of record and transcripts of what has gone on in the magistrates court are not readily available. If there were to be an appeal of the sort that is contemplated in this legislation, my understanding is that there needs to be quite a lot of work to put the nuts and bolts in place in the magistrates court. Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I had not understood that it was expected that this could be put into place immediately. It is more a tidying-up measure, as I see it, that accompanies issues that are really much more important.

Clement Goldstone: In principle, I am in favour of controlling the right of appeal to the Crown court. When I was in Liverpool—it is not that long ago—we were sitting one or sometimes two judges on Thursdays and Fridays on appeals. For some unknown reason, there seemed to be a lot dangerous dogs in Liverpool, so there were a lot of dangerous dog appeals.

More seriously, I do not think the right is abused, because it is there to be utilised, but I do believe that there is an argument for weeding out a lot of hopeless appeals. Also, you must bear in mind that if there is an appeal based on a wish to call fresh evidence, particularly perhaps bearing in mind that a defendant in the magistrates court was not represented, that is something that would have to be carefully considered, so I would not reject it as a good idea, because it could result in time savings, but it is something that has to be counselled with caution.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q You said that your preference would be for two magistrates and a judge to sit together, and I understand your views on that. There are already examples in our criminal justice system of where a judge sits alone in the magistrates court. We have district judges, which I am old enough to remember as stipendiary magistrates. I am not aware of any big campaigns or calls for them to be abolished. They deal with the most serious cases in the magistrates court, or tend to. Are you aware of any campaign to get rid of them because of unfairness or otherwise?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: District judges (magistrates’ court), formerly stipendiary magistrates, have been a feature of our system since the mid-19th century—I cannot remember precisely which year they were introduced. I have never been aware of any reasoned criticism of the way in which they conduct cases. On the contrary, the rate of appeal that Sir Richard referred to includes cases that have been tried by district judges and deputy district judges. It is a phenomenon that we are used to in the criminal justice system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

I would not disagree with that for one second.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you all for being here. It is very helpful to have your views as part of today’s evidence gathering. Do any of you share concerns that there is a lower level of legal aid available in the magistrates court, and that that could have an impact when magistrates hear cases that carry higher sentences?

Fiona Rutherford: Yes, and I referred earlier to the impact of having more litigants in person, which would be the impact of there being fewer lawyers representing defendants in the magistrates court. If you are looking at it from a victim’s perspective, one of the key things is that you will get the cross-examination directly from the defendant in court. Equally, there are some issues with the way that appeals will take place. At the moment, as Emma has said, there is a reliance on the lawyers to really lead the way with those appeals—that is possibly why only 1% of appeals go from the magistrates to the Crown court.

Without a lawyer being present, and of course without there even being the right to appeal directly, you are leaving a whole load of defendants, who may well be wrongly convicted or may get the wrong sentence for the crime they have committed, floundering. From what we know, either about the legislation or the policy that sits around it, I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward. There are a number of ramifications of legal aid being an issue in the magistrates court, or of there not being enough legal aid.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you. I have a question for Emma about appeals. Excuse my ignorance, but my understanding is that, if you are appealing from a magistrates court, you already have to have grounds for appeal anyway. You cannot just say, “Well, I didn’t like that; I’d like to appeal and go up to the Crown court.” There is already a threshold that has to be met—is that correct?

Emma Torr: There is a simple form where you have to set out your reasons for appealing, but there is no judge in the Crown court looking at that form and saying, “You’re not entitled to an appeal because you haven’t set out the reasons why you want to appeal.” It is an automatic right to a full rehearing in the Crown court. That is so important, because that automatic right acts as an essential counterbalance. We have heard about swift and speedy justice in the magistrates court. It is often rough and ready; we are talking about cases being tried by lay justices, some of whom may be experienced but some may not be, and we are also talking about less experienced judges. You often find in the lower court, the magistrates court, that advocates are more inexperienced and tend to be at the start of their career. The more experienced they are, the more serious the cases they deal with. What I am trying to say is that to have rough and ready justice dealt with quickly, the magistrates court requires that automatic right to redress any mistakes that might have happened. Let me put it this way: the automatic right of appeal is the ying to the magistrates’ yang, in the sense that you have an important safeguard against the miscarriages that do happen.

It is worth pointing out that the Magistrates’ Association, in its response to the Law Commission’s consultation paper, agreed with retaining the automatic right of appeal on the basis that justice may occasionally result in rough edges and potential errors in the magistrates court. In its view, the automatic right of appeal operates as a crucial safeguard, and that is essentially what we are saying.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I have a quick question for Cassia. The Government proposals rely on the magistrates court taking on a significant amount of additional work and, importantly, sentencing powers. Have the Government adequately outlined how that will be mitigated in the magistrates courts? What assessment have you made about how much quicker they will be able to hear cases compared with the Crown court?

Cassia Rowland: We have not done an in-depth assessment of that. If by mitigation you are thinking about the justice fairness outcome, we have been principally focused on the ability of the courts to cope with this, but there is, as Emma mentioned, an acceptance that summary justice is rapid justice and it can be a bit rough around the edges. There needs to be a clear-eyed assessment of the trade-off you are potentially making between swifter justice by hearing more cases in magistrates courts and more robust justice in the Crown court.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I have one more question. Has the IfG ever done any modelling around the efficiency savings that could be made by introducing the RASSO courts, as per as the Labour manifesto, or by other reforms to the criminal justice system, such as introducing am and pm sitting days?

Cassia Rowland: We have not. Regarding the specialist RASSO courts, the principal arguments for those are about not efficiency, but the experience of the victim and the more trauma-informed and wraparound approach that that kind of set-up would allow for.

[Alex McIntyre]

Q Emma and Fiona, my questions are directed at you, and I will bring them together, even though they are on slightly different subjects. Emma, I am glad you raised the case of Andrew Malkinson, which was obviously a shocking miscarriage of justice. It is important to note that he had a jury trial at the Crown court, and there was a right to appeal. There is a process that needs to be followed to go to the Court of Appeal, where somebody considers the grounds and whether a person has that right. I assume that it is not APPEAL’s position to removal of that process.

Earlier, we heard evidence from victims who supported the change to the right to appeal against a magistrates court decision to include a review from a judge, on the basis that a number of victims drop out of the process because they fear being retraumatised by a system that is not designed to support them. How do you balance that with your position that there needs to be checks and balances? Do you not agree that, by having a judge look at it, we are not refusing a right of appeal but merely qualifying it first?

Fiona, JUSTICE has said that the magistrates are ill-equipped to enable the reforms, and you have made that point again today, but the Magistrates’ Association, which is not here to give evidence today, has said that magistrates are ready and willing to play their part. Why does your assessment differ from that of the magistrates themselves?

Fiona Rutherford: We already know that the numbers are not where they need to be, given the number of magistrates required to do the huge amount of work that would be placed into their hands. Equally, we have not heard yet —maybe there are plans on this—how magistrates will be better trained to be able to cope with the greater complexity of cases that they will necessarily hear. I have talked about the disproportionality of magistrates in terms of socioeconomic grouping; that is absolutely critical when it comes to public trust. There is a final point, but it has escaped me, so I will let Emma come in on this and I might come back to you.

Emma Torr: That was a good question, on which I would like to make two points. The case of Andrew Malkinson is a good example to consider when talking about these changes. Of course, there was a victim in that case, who was certain that the right person had gone to prison, but we know that Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for something that he did not do. When he appealed at the time, a judge looked at his appeal at the Court of Appeal; twice he went to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and twice his case was turned down. That is an example of where a judge has looked at the appeal, but would not give him—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

It is a good question. Can you answer it?

Tim Crosland: I want to talk particularly about cases where people are saying—like Clive Ponting and many activists did—that the motivation for taking the action is that what the state is doing is insufficient to protect the public. That is a fundamentally different situation. Look at the Colston situation: who better to decide whether that action crossed a threshold than a cross-section of Bristol residents, who would understand better than anybody in this room the impact of that statue on that community? That would not happen any more; it would be a paid judge deciding. In my submission, it is precisely those cases where a jury trial is a democratic imperative and where you would lose something really profound.

To answer your question, I would not wish to say that other people should not have a jury trial. I am not saying that at all; I am just making a particular argument for these cases.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I have a very simple question: what are the risks of ignoring campaigners like you when we talk about fundamentally changing the way we do jury trials?

Tim Crosland: The risk is to democracy and to people’s confidence in democracy in cases that explore the boundaries between public interest, the right to protest and criminal law. We lose the essence of democratic rights if people know that they will not get a trial before their peers. It is a very profound danger. It was only in 2024 after 69-year-old retired social worker Trudi Warner had been arrested and prosecuted for holding up a sign outside London Crown court that the High Court said that juries were entitled to acquit as a matter of conscience. Her case came before the High Court, which dismissed the Government’s prosecution of her and said that jury equity is a vital principle of our democracy and she was right to uphold it. It was part of her convention rights. We lose that principle if we ignore protesters when we look at this legislation.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We have one minute.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Hack]

Q Following on from the shadow Minister’s question about what good reform looks like, we have had a period of reform in the justice system. What would be your measure of success? We know the system is creaking under pressure, so what would success look like?

Sarah Sackman: There are two tests that I set myself, and neither is going to be easy to achieve within this Parliament. The first essay question is: can you deal with the intolerable delays? Can you ensure swift justice? That does not mean summary justice. That does not mean rushing through the cases, but it does mean getting through the caseload quicker so that people are not waiting for years. At the end of this Parliament, I do not want people waiting years for justice. That is the first test. It is the timeliness, which is the essential ingredient of fairness.

The second thing is: we are in a crisis, but we have an opportunity—with justice being the focus of our Parliament and our national debate for the first time in a very long time, and with real investment from the Treasury—to create something better. Our justice system has remained largely unreformed since the 1970s. There are lots of things that people might like about the 1970s, not least the music, but there were lots about our social values and our societal norms that were very different then. It was a different place for women, for black and minority ethnic communities, for gay people and lots of other communities. I do not think the system that was designed then is the one that we would design now.

We heard earlier from Katrin Hohl, who is leading work for the Government to embed some of the Soteria measures, which have been so good and progressive in the police and the CPS, into our courts. I know it can sound like a cheesy cliché, but my objective is the idea of building back something better, and designing a system that is not just sustainable and capable of dealing with the delays question but, in terms of its design, centres victims and is fair, particularly to women and black and minority ethnic communities. That is my objective: can we get a more progressive justice system?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Do you share my discomfort that we have no pilot to refer to, to see if the proposed measures would work?

Sarah Sackman: The difficulty is that any pilot where you are testing the sorts of measures that we are countenancing, which have taken their cue from the IRCC, would require primary legislation. We could not do this without primary legislation in the first place. Secondly, I do not feel discomfort, and I feel confident in the measures, because they are based on expertise that the independent review gave us. Thirdly, as we have heard, the time for pilots was yesterday—it was probably 10 years ago. The state of the backlogs at 80,000 and continuing to grow means that we have to pull every lever to not just reform the system but to invest in it and modernise it, to bring down those backlogs.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q On pilots, I agree that something needs to be done now. A pilot ran during the pandemic that looked at dual court sitting days. That pilot showed that courtrooms were able to hear 3.5 cases in a week compared with the typical rate of 0.9. It was a short pilot that was run in seven courtrooms. Have you had conversations in the MOJ about alternative reforms to bring down the court backlogs? If you have, why was the decision taken to not look at that proposal? If you have not, why not?

Sarah Sackman: We learned a huge amount through the pandemic. To give a personal example, I had a trial that was due to come on the day that we went into lockdown, and we were told that we were going to do it on video link. People had been speaking for years about the use of videos in courts. They said you couldn’t do it: you could not cross-examine a witness; you could not do your advocacy. Yet there we were. We were all told to go on video, and the sky did not fall in—it worked. We learnt and the MOJ got a lot of institutional knowledge through the pandemic.

There are also a lot of piloting initiatives that the MOJ is undertaking: for example, our pilots for our new digital listing tool, where we are taking some of the lessons from Liverpool and elsewhere but doing that using data. We are piloting that in Isleworth and Preston. A lot of that evidence would have been put forward to the IRCC. Obviously, it is also held within the MOJ. This package of measures that we are bringing forward, when you model, it is what we believe is capable of bringing down the backlog, together with the investment and modernisation.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q If I can ask my question again to clarify, have you as the Minister had any conversations with any officials in the MOJ about the pilot that happened in the pandemic, specifically about two cases being heard in a Crown court in a day? Why was that discounted?

Sarah Sackman: On that specific example, I would have to go away and ask what was considered by officials because it has not been surfaced to my attention. I have had the blitz courts, where cases are listed very aggressively, brought to my attention, and we are doing them in London as of next month. I do not know about the specific pilot you are talking about. I have not considered that directly, but I am sure that my officials have.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I am happy to send you the Government link to that.

Sarah Sackman: I would appreciate that, thank you.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Sir Richard Henriques, who we heard from earlier, said that if we were not facing such a huge backlog we would not be here at all. I may have bastardised his language slightly, but do you agree with him?

Sarah Sackman: I think that I know where this is going, because I think that you will push me on this. Plainly, we are here, and the nature of the debate is shaped by the appalling backlog in our courts and the crisis we face—we all agree on that. There are 80,000 cases, and behind every one is a victim, and cases are being listed into 2030. This British justice system, which we will have huge pride in, is kind of indefensible.

You have heard me say in the Chamber, and I am not going to resile from it, that there are certainly parts of this plan that I would be advocating for anyway, because I think that they will make the system fairer and more sustainable. You heard the police chief talk about the fact that demand pressures come into the picture not just because of the backlog but because of the changing nature and complexity of criminal trials. The system needs to reform itself.

You heard Charlotte, one of the victims who spoke earlier, talk about the changes to the right to elect. I find it curious that Scotland, for example, does not have the right of election for a defendant. We know that it exists in Canada—we heard about that example—but it does not exist in Scotland, and there are lots of other jurisdictions where that does not exist. I find it strange that the defendant chooses the mode of trial, rather than the court triaging it. I use a healthcare analogy: if I go to A&E on a Saturday night, I do not get to insist that I get to see the specialist consultant if I can be treated appropriately by a resident health associate. It seems to me that the changes are normative and values-driven, and would be good for the system anyway.

We probably would not be here at this time of night with this exact shape of debate if it was not for the crisis, but I stand by the principles that lie behind the reforms we are bringing forward.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Finally—I will be very quick—you spoke about making the system fairer, and I think that it is shared across all parties that we would like to see that. Will you be looking to address the disparity between the legal aid provision in magistrates courts and Crown courts during the passage of this Bill?

Sarah Sackman: That is a really good question, and you have asked me it in the Chamber. At the moment, 97% of applications for legal aid in the magistrates context are approved. We have to fully consider the IRCC package and see what final version of this Bill, if it passes through Parliament, receives Royal Assent, and then reassess and ensure that the availability of legal aid across both magistrates and Crown courts is not a barrier to access to justice. We have a means test in criminal legal aid, and that is important. It is important that people who can afford to pay their legal fees do but, where you do not have the means, it is important that you can access legal aid to get representation, which is why the hardship mechanism that we currently have exists. That will be a really important feature of the system to ensure that legal aid provision—

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of the Minister. I thank the Minister for her time today.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Stephen Morgan.)

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Seventh sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Clause 3 and its various parts outline how trials can take place without juries. The Liberal Democrats have always fundamentally opposed the move to remove the right to a trial in front of one’s peers and the introduction of single-judge trials. To be clear, we do not accept the status quo and neither does anyone who I have spoken to in the legal profession or courts. The backlogs are totally unacceptable and they are failing victims, defendants and the people working in the criminal justice system. But no one in that system thinks that the fault lies with the jury trial system. In fact, Sir Brian stated that in our recent evidence session.

The decision is being made without any decisive modelling that would demonstrate that it would have the intended effect. There is also a timing issue with the proposal to restrict the use of a jury. Nationally, we have seen an intense displeasure with our democracy, and faith in politics and our political system is at an all-time low. It is fractured and deeply distrustful. When we have mistrust in our political system, it seeps into our justice system. Around six in 10 people express a fair amount or a great deal of confidence in juries delivering the right verdict compared with around four in 10 for courts and judges more generally.

Clause 3 proposes something that will risk a great deal without the evidence that shows it will actually work. That is why it is so strongly opposed. The Government instead should be implementing evidence-based reforms to target inefficiencies, including but not limited to negotiating the failed prisoner escort contract, introducing victim-led intensive case management across the regions, and investing in rehabilitation to reduce reoffending. They could also explore reducing the court backlog by running two trials in a day in select courtrooms instead of one, making more efficient use of time by nearly doubling the hearing time per sitting day and accelerating the throughput of cases. They could also develop and implement a more ambitious strategy to reduce delays in rape and serious sexual offences cases, or implement their own manifesto pledge to introduce speciality RASSO courts, which we will no doubt debate at a later stage of the Bill.

I am confident that the Minister will say, as she did in the evidence session, “Why is the backlog not coming down if we can make the system work better?” She put that question to Caroline Goodwin KC, Claire Davies KC and Samantha Hillas KC, saying,

“I have not seen any evidence that it can be reduced absent reform from the circuits.”

Caroline Goodwin came back with:

“The reality is that we have not been able to do this. Because there has been a consistent cap on sitting days, judges have not been able to open up court days. They have not been able to run blitz days where they can really take hold of a case and shake it and say, ‘Right, what is going on?’ We have not had any great directives to the CPS to say, ‘When you’re charging these cases, you need to review these very thoroughly.’ Throughout this entire time, the criminal Bar and the entire justice system has been brought to its knees. So if you are saying, ‘Is there any empirical evidence that this doesn’t work on your circuit, Ms Goodwin?’, we have not been able to do it.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 48, Q94.]

Why do we believe that we need to protect the safeguard of a jury trial while still reforming the criminal courts in other ways? The Lammy review in 2017 found that black and Chinese women were convicted at higher rates than white women in magistrate courts but not by juries. The Criminal Bar Association commissioned an independent study of criminal barristers; of the 2,029 who responded, 94% raised concerns about the lack of diversity in the Crown court bench division and 88% were against the introduction of a Crown court bench division altogether.

If we take the figures in the impact assessment that the Government have provided at face value, the proposal will save 5,000 sitting days per annum. That is around 3.5% of the Crown court workload. That means that rape complainants or victims who are currently waiting years for their own trial to be heard might see their cases brought forward by about a week. On the Government’s own estimates, the changes will not start taking effect until after the next general election. It is not providing a solution to the current crisis. Indeed, the impact assessment was based on a premise that it compared “do nothing” with the effects of all of the Government’s measures proposed in the Bill, but nobody is proposing “do nothing”. Radical investment and reform is already taking place and is welcomed. The Government were right to introduce removing the cap on sitting days and encourage blitz courts in a number of courts in the different regions. That has cross-party support and will bring down the backlog by more direct means.

I would also like to briefly highlight the perversity in the cut-off of three years. Let us take the case of a 20-year-old student charged with unlawful wounding, where someone’s face was gashed by a glass thrown in a bar. Under the sentencing guidelines, if they were of good character they would face imprisonment of between two and three years. That conviction would be life changing and that young defendant would not qualify for trial by jury under these proposals. Let us take exactly the same case, but involving a 40-year-old defendant with a long criminal record who has been to prison before. Because of their record, the likely sentence for the same offence would exceed three years and they would get trial by jury, whereas a young man with no convictions would not. I ask the Committee to reflect on the perversity created by changing the threshold.

I conclude by reiterating that clause 3, which sets out how the Crown court should allocate a case for trial without a jury and the procedure, should not be included in the Bill, and I shall vote against its inclusion.

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I rise to speak to the new clause that is tabled in my name, which I do not intend to push to a vote. It would require the Lord Chancellor to conduct and lay before Parliament a review of the impact of clause 3 after 12 months, and again after no later than 36 months. At its heart, the new clause is both modest and reasonable. It does not seek to block the Government’s proposals outright, nor does it attempt to rewrite the substance of the Bill. It simply asks that we understand the impact of the changes we are making and that we are accountable for them.

As Members across the House know, clause 3 introduces significant changes to the operation of the courts, particularly through the insertion of the new provisions into the Senior Courts Act 1981. Those provisions mark a clear shift in how justice is delivered. When we make changes of this scale, we have a duty not only to legislate, but to reflect on their impact and remain accountable for the consequences.

The Law Society of England and Wales has raised concerns that reforms to court processes must be carefully monitored to ensure they do not inadvertently undermine access to justice, particularly for those who already face barriers in navigating the legal system. These concerns are drawn from the experience of legal practitioners working day to day in the courts, particularly in cases involving litigants in person who often are trying to navigate complex procedures without legal representation. It has also emphasised the importance of evaluating how such changes operate in practice, including their impact on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and on the capacity of the courts to deliver justice effectively.

The society has made it clear that such changes can have unintended consequences that are often felt most by the people who already struggle to access justice. That goes directly to public confidence in the justice system. Surely, trust and perception in the justice system are just as important as the legal framework itself. Concerns have also been raised by the Family Services Foundation, which highlights how procedural changes can disproportionately affect vulnerable individuals and families already facing complex challenges. That reflects its work with the families involved in the court system, where even small procedural changes can have a significant impact on people who are already dealing with instability, stress or crisis situations.

New clause 29 would ensure that Parliament receives clear evidence-based assessments of how the provisions are working in practice. Crucially, it would require that the assessments consider the impact on two groups: people from ethnic minority backgrounds and white British individuals living in lower-income households. As highlighted in earlier stages of the scrutiny of the Bill, there is a lack of clear statutory review built into the provisions, in particular in clause 3.

Some may ask, why specify those groups? The answer is simple—because justice is not experienced equally by all. We know all too well through evidence, lived experience and countless testimonies that people from ethnic minority communities often have lower levels of trust in the criminal justice system. That shapes how justice is perceived and whether it is seen as legitimate. For ethnic minority communities, this is fundamentally about trust in the justice system and perception of fairness.

Equally, we must recognise that socioeconomic disadvantage can profoundly affect a person’s experience of the courts. White British individuals from lower-income households are also more likely to feel marginalised by systems that appear distant, complex or unresponsive to their circumstances. If this House is serious about fairness, we must be serious about understanding how reforms affect those who are most at risk of being left behind.

New clause 29 does not assume the outcome. It does not claim that the provisions of clause 3 will necessarily have a negative impact, but it does recognise that without proper review, we simply will not know. That in itself would be a failure of our responsibility as legislators. The timeline set out in the new clause—a review after 12 months and a further review no later than after 36 months—strikes a careful balance. The reviews allow for early identification of any emerging issues, while also ensuring that long-term effects are properly understood. Importantly, the reviews would be laid before Parliament, ensuring transparency and enabling this House to scrutinise the findings. If the changes are working well, a review would demonstrate that; if they are not, a review would give us the opportunity to put things right.

I urge Members across the House to support new clause 29, not as a challenge to the Bill, but as a practical step towards fairness, transparency and accountability in our justice system. This House should be confident in reforms, but it should also be confident in knowing when to pause, assess and reflect. That is all that the new clause asks for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The Institute for Government also said that juries do not take up that much time—they save more time. The point is that, without too much difficulty, we could get the courts up and running and working for extra sitting days. Essentially, if we had more court sitting days, we would not have the backlog; it is not the juries that are causing the backlog.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Does the hon. Lady recognise that the 2025 Criminal Bar Association study noted that one in five barristers are considering leaving the criminal Bar, not because of the ineffectiveness of jury trials but because they have to work in crumbling buildings, because there is a significant administrative burden associated with passing on information to the CPS and because of the number of ineffective cases that then do not go ahead? Does she agree that if we tackle the inefficiencies in courts, we are more likely to improve our retention of criminal barristers and encourage some of them to come back into the profession because the system will work better?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I entirely agree. The state of some of the courts in this country is sad. They are completely neglected, which creates a lot of challenges.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eighth sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Amber Valley. She has engaged sincerely throughout this debate, so I do not think her comment was a deliberate. We are not saying that someone has to be charged with everything to be eligible; we are saying that anything that they are charged for on that basis that excludes them from a jury trial should only be those offences. We are saying that if someone is charged for insider dealing and the judge decides that the case is complex or lengthy, under the legislation they will get a single-judge trial. The proposed legislation says that if they were also charged with grievous bodily harm, then that case, which would ordinarily continue to have a jury trial, would be seen without a jury. That would mean that just because someone happens to be charged with one of those offences alongside another one, they lose their access to a jury trial on both offences.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The point that the shadow Minister is making is that the clause is a substantial expansion of what we understand the legislation to be doing in terms of a judge-only trial. Somebody could be charged with 10 offences. One of those could be related to a lengthy fraud case, but the rest of the offences would mean that they would still get a judge-only trial, which is a significant expansion of what we believe this Bill is trying to do.

[Dr Mullan]

Absolutely, and there is not even anything in the Bill about proportionality. There is nothing. If someone is charged with one of the offences and the trial will be complex and lengthy—which is different to it being serious—that is it. Whatever else someone is charged with, they have already lost their right to a jury trial. That is a huge expansion.

I intervened to ask the Minister to explain why they have chosen to exclude sexual assaults. If someone is charged with GBH, then they lose their right to a jury trial, but if they are charged with a sexual assault, which in the sentencing guidelines may lead to them having an even lower sentence than a serious GBH, they will continue to have a jury trial, and a fraud offence would continue to be seen by a jury instead of a judge. It is completely contradictory. There is no logic behind the Government’s position. If they had a throughline as to why sexual assault, which is an absolutely terrible offence, is being set to one side, but something as serious as GBH, which can carry a sentence of many years and is also terrible for victims, then there would be more logic to it. But the Government have crafted an approach that is simply unfair and, as the Lib Dem spokeswoman pointed out, represents a massive expansion in all the different types of offences and sentence lengths that could potentially lose access to a jury trial, just because they also happen to be charged with an ancillary offence related to complex fraud. I am afraid there is no rational basis to that at all.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

In the last couple of weeks, there have been press reports about a particular case that was charged in 2019. I will not go into that because it is going to reopen, but clause 4 would mean, for example, that somebody who has been abusing and defrauding the elderly—perhaps many different elderly people—over many years and has caused significant harm not of a sexual nature, and who is therefore charged with multiple offences, gets a judge-only trial and is not tried by a jury. If there was a sexual offence, they would get a jury, but if they had been harming multiple people and defrauding them, they would be tried by a judge alone. Does he agree that that feels quite perverse?

[Dr Mullan]

It is another example of what we have talked about: the move away from what we would consider to be natural justice. The scenario the hon. Member points to is not bizarre; there are offenders who target elderly women, for example, and will use all sorts of different methods to abuse them, from financial to sexual. I have seen cases of that nature. We see people who, at the same time as physically and sexually abusing a family member, were taking money from their bank account and falsely representing them to claim benefits, which again would be covered by the clause. It covers a whole range of offences, in all sorts of patterns. The Government call our amendment too rigid when, actually, the rigidity is quite clearly in the charging and allocation decisions; it is all on the Government’s side. They are being entirely rigid. If someone is subject to one of these cases and the judge thinks it is complex or lengthy, they will lose the right to a jury trial, end of story. I do not think that is a position that the Minister should feel comfortable advocating, and it is why we intend to press our amendment.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Amendment 29 would insert into subsection (3) an additional ground for a lengthy or complex case to be tried without a jury in England or Wales, to require agreement by the defence and the prosecution that the trial is likely to exceed five months. Amendment 30 is almost self-explanatory: it would provide a right of appeal against a judge’s decision to prevent a case from going to a jury trial. We seek to give a right of appeal to the defence—and the prosecution—if the judge decides that the case fits the category of a complex case such as a fraud case. Amendments 31 to 33 would add additional offences to the list of offences that will be excluded from the provisions of clause 4. Offences such as homicide, including under road traffic legislation, will be excluded, and amendments 31 to 33 would extend that list.

I want to speak both to clause 4 and to clause 5, which, as I understand it, will enable clause 4. Unlike the provisions in clauses 1 to 3, clauses 4 and 5 at least provide that the defence and the prosecution may make representations before a judge directs a trial without a jury. I acknowledge that that is a meaningful procedural difference, but the principle remains deeply troubling, and I want to explain why. It is a further restriction on the right to trial by jury; more cases could be caught by this provision, which means that people will not be able to have a trial by jury.

The central argument for clauses 4 and 5 is that certain cases—fraud cases, multi-handed cases or those involving extensive financial or digital evidence—are simply too complex or long for a jury to follow. I have to say directly that I find that argument unfair to ordinary members of the public. Trial by jury is not simply a procedural mechanism; it is a fundamental expression of the relationship between the citizen and the state. It says that, when the state seeks to deprive a person of their liberty, that judgment will not be made by the state alone but by 12 of that person’s fellow citizens. That is important, because it is embedded in our legal tradition.

Let me speak from direct experience: in my years of criminal practice, I never once saw a jury that looked confused, overwhelmed or unable to follow the case before them. One of the last cases I conducted at the Bar was a seven-handed trial at the central criminal court. It went on for a number of weeks and involved serious allegations, multiple defendants, CCTV evidence and complex factual issues. Some of the defendants were charged with murder and manslaughter, there were issues such as joinder—agreement by different groups of people about whether they were committing crimes or not—and all sorts of legal directives had to be given. As it happened, the jury followed the evidence, assessed it and reached its verdicts. That has been my experience across many cases, including complex fraud, multi-defendant drug conspiracies and cases involving technical or sensitive evidence.

One of the jobs I had as a prosecutor was as a specialist casework lawyer for London CPS, which meant dealing with some of the most complex cases. When I was in the CPS, I also worked on proceeds of crime cases. In fact, I was what they call a POCA—Proceeds of Crime Act 2002—specialist for my branch. We were looking at financial auditing and asset recovery, deciding what kind of charges to go by, dealing with the issues of undercover operations, surveillance evidence, what we call the RIPA—Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 —rules, and cases involving public officials. Across all of that experience, the issue was never whether the jury could follow the evidence; the issue was whether the case was properly presented.

Given the way trials work, what a prosecutor presents to a jury is exactly what they would present to a judge. They explain the evidence, they connect the facts and the dots, and they build a case. The process does not change, but the audience does. If the evidence is presented clearly, a jury can follow it. If it is not, that is a failure of advocacy, not a failure of the jury, and the judge will get as confused as anybody else.

For example, if a prosecutor is trying to prove certain things, they will say, “If you look at exhibit 25 on page 1,000 of the jury bundle, you will see that this phone belongs to the defendant,” and create a link. Then they will say that another page shows the evidence extracted from the phone and explain how that is linked. They would do that for a judge as well, because judges want the prosecution to explain things to them, too. They must do that and follow the continuity of the evidence.

At the end of the day, whether the case involves insider dealing or financial accounting, people can see if the information is presented to them properly. The prosecutor might show them a document that says there was x amount of money in one account, but it went missing and has now been found in another person’s account. It is about making sure that all the dots are connected, and they would have to do that with a judge as well. The judge will not just flick through the papers and say, “Ms Prosecutor, you can just sit down and I’ll go through it.” The prosecutor, through their witnesses or their physical evidence or their section 9 statements or section 10 admissions, will have to prove each and every aspect of the case and the role each defendant played in it.

Although a number of people may be charged with one offence, we know that under our criminal law the sentence they can get if convicted varies depending on the role they played in the crime. Issues include who counselled it, procured it, aided and abetted it—who played what role—and people will be sentenced accordingly. Again, that is a matter on which a prosecutor or defence counsel would show everyone evidence and say, “This is what happened.” Therefore, it really makes no difference whether the case is being presented to jurors or a judge.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Does the hon. Lady agree with His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC, who argued that jury trials could actually impose discipline in complex fraud cases, whereas in a judge-only trial there is no incentive to get on and hear all the evidence? He also said that in such cases, juries decide issues of dishonesty and facts that are not necessarily technical, meaning that 12 jurors are in a much better position to reach a decision based on dishonesty.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I could go on and on explaining how evidence is presented, but all I will say from my years of experience—not just in the CPS, but in the independent Bar as well—is that I have gone through thousands of pages of documents, and juries have reacted to that and been able to deal with the cases unfazed. The issue is how well the evidence is presented, and counsel would have the same duty to do that in front of a judge.

In some respects, a jury trial is better when legal issues or the admissibility of evidence have to be determined during a trial. In a jury trial, the judge can send the jury out and listen to everyone’s representations about whether something should be admitted or not, and then make a decision. That is helpful because juries then never know about all the debates that have taken place. Sometimes there is evidence that a party wants to be admitted that is inadmissible or would be prejudicial.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak in support of Opposition amendment 46, which is in my name, as we debate elements of the Government’s proposals to remove jury trials and make use of the new Crown court bench division in relation to potentially complex and lengthy trials.

To make sense of this debate, we must consider how the measures will apply. As we touched on earlier, the Government’s stated aim is to reduce the time taken to hear particularly lengthy and complex cases by permitting judge-alone trials and therefore—they say—freeing up additional Crown court capacity. The cases must involve at least one fraud or related financial offence listed in proposed new schedule 3ZA, which includes fraud by false representation, cheating the public revenue, money laundering and other offences, and would not involve an indictable-only homicide offence or sexual offence, including attempts or conspiracies to commit such offences.

We can already see, when considering the written evidence we have received, why there are rightly many questions about how the provisions will operate. In amendment 46, we therefore propose a requirement to ensure that defendants have a route in the law back to a jury trial. I draw the Committee’s attention to the evidence of Dr Natalie Hodgson, from the University of New South Wales, and Dr Matt Thomason, from the University of Nottingham, which was particularly helpful. They point out:

“Currently, the proposed s.42A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 does not define what is meant by “lengthy” or “complex”...Similarly, the proposed legislation provides no detail as to what judges can and should consider in determining whether ‘it is in the public interest’ for the trial to be conducted by judge alone. The Explanatory Note makes clear that ‘the court will retain full discretion’ as to whether it is appropriate to order a trial by judge alone.”

That is giving judges enormous power over these decisions.

Dr Thomason and Dr Hodgson also say:

“In contrast, we note that in New Zealand—which has a similar provision permitting judge-alone trials in cases ‘likely to be long and complex’—the relevant legislation sets out with greater specificity what a judge should consider in determining whether a case is likely to be long and complex…In particular, the New Zealand legislation specifies that a Court must not order a judge-alone trial unless all reasonable measures and arrangements have been taken to shorten the length of the trial, but the ‘duration of the trial still seems likely to exceed 20 sitting days.’”

So New Zealand was capable, in its legislation, of drawing a line in the sand as to what it considered to be a lengthy trial, but we do not seem to be doing the same.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The hon. Member is making a really interesting point about what we perceive to be lengthy or complex, as the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden tried to do with her amendment. Amendment 29 seeks to define a lengthy trial as one going beyond the five-month point, but Geoffrey Rivlin KC collected data over six years from Southwark Crown court—the primary venue for complex financial crime trials—which showed that the vast majority of fraud cases lasted less than three months, with only one or two typically lasting more than that, and only two cases in total lasting over six months. Does the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle agree that it would be helpful for the Minister to clarify what she believes “lengthy” or “complex” to be? The judiciary will also be asking that.

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[Sarah Sackman]

I will make a bit of progress.

We also need to be mindful of the burden that lengthy trials place on jurors. In this country, between January 2024 and December 2025, almost 3,000 jurors sat in trials that lasted more than six weeks. We should be mindful that trials for fraud and serious financial crime, which are within the purview of this clause, are some of the longest and most demanding in the Crown courts. We also have to be mindful of our argument on the time savings of having judge-only trials for such cases.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Has the Ministry of Justice done any modelling on the benefits of introducing Maxwell hours for all lengthy fraud cases? Doing so would benefit jurors, as they would only be committed to sitting from 8 am until midday and could go on to fulfil their caring responsibilities and such. The same goes for judges when dealing with complex fraud cases.

[Sarah Sackman]

I do not have any modelling to hand, but I can certainly take that away. If that work has been done, I will let the hon. Lady have it, but I do not have it to hand so I simply do not know.

I do not want to go over old ground, but we heard in oral evidence, particularly from the panel of experienced judges, about the time savings related to judge-only trials. Reference was made to other jurisdictions, and the data from New South Wales, which is a comparable common law jurisdiction, shows that when it introduced judge-only trials in complex cases, it saw a 29% reduction in the length of trials, so the Government are confident that clause 4 will result in material time savings.

Amendment 29 would make parties’ agreement that a trial is likely to last more than five months a condition of judge-only trials under clause 4. Of course, I agree that five months is an exceptionally long time to expect any member of the public to serve on a jury, but we cannot ignore the fact that considerably shorter trials can be equally as disruptive to jurors’ lives, particularly if they are self-employed or have caring responsibilities.

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[Rebecca Paul]

I agree with my hon. Friend, as I normally do.

Finally, there is the obvious practical point that there are better answers available. The Law Society says that reform and investment must be strategic, not piecemeal, and warns against stand-alone measures such as changing from jury trials to judge-only trials without convincing evidence that they will significantly reduce the backlog. It says that Parliament should insist on “detailed modelling” and on understanding the Government’s intentions across the whole package of reform, not just on this isolated measure. The existence of pressure in the system does not prove that every proposed constitutional shortcut is justified. The question is whether the shortcut is necessary. With clause 4, the answer is plainly no. For all those reasons, I oppose clause 4 and schedule 1, and I support amendment 51.

Clause 4 offers a constitutionally serious reduction in jury trials for a tiny claimed benefit of 200 sitting days. The evidence does not show that juries are the cause of delay, collapse or miscarriage in these cases. Fraud cases are not too technical for juries. The key issue is dishonesty, and ordinary citizens are uniquely well placed to judge that. The removal of juries in these cases would damage open justice and public confidence. Schedule 1 gives effect to that flawed principle and then goes further by creating a route to ministerial expansion. Amendment 51 is therefore a sensible and necessary safeguard, but in truth, the better course is simpler still: clause 4 and schedule 1 should not be included in the Bill at all.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I will speak against the inclusion of clause 4. It inserts part 6A in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which will allow complex or lengthy cases to be tried without a jury. My main opposition to the clause is that it is a pointless exercise by the Government that will in no way affect the backlog. The Government’s own impact assessment suggests that the savings will amount to just 200 sitting days per year, which is a tiny fraction—0.18% of the current sitting days. The Government argue that these cases can continue for many months, thereby wasting jurors’ time or putting additional pressure on those called for jury service. However, data from Southwark Crown court, where the majority of fraud and other such cases are heard, shows that only one or two cases per year exceed three months, and only two between 2018 and 2024 went beyond six months.

His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC has argued that jury trials impose discipline, which helps to reduce the length of fraud trials. Without that incentive, judge-alone trials may be as long as or even longer than jury trials. I alluded to this earlier, but jurors decide on issues of dishonesty and fact in these cases, which are not necessarily technical. Twelve jurors are therefore in a much better position to reach a decision.

I also have grave concerns about the terminology of “complex” and “lengthy”. I know the Minister has said that the meaning of complex and lengthy are well understood in the judiciary. I would argue that a lot of people in the legal profession are pushing back against that assertion, and that the Bill does not provide clarity on what they should determine to be complex or lengthy.

[Joe Robertson]

The hon. Member is making a very good speech, but she is almost being generous. The wording in the Bill is not “complex”; it is “complexity”, which is a description, not even a value. The Bill is even vaguer than what the hon. Member is suggesting in her well-made point.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the hon. Member for his point; he characterises me very well as being generous.

I would also argue that the scope is expanded significantly if one of the offences that a defendant is charged with is fraud, money laundering or any of the offences that sit in that category. There can be 10 charges against a defendant, and if one of them is fraud, money laundering or terrorism funding, that entire case could be heard in a judge-alone trial.

The Minister spoke very clearly about recognising the burden on jurors. She made a legitimate point, and it is certainly reflected in reality. Especially when jury trials do not run as we would expect them to run, the impact on jurors can be huge, especially for those who are self-employed or have caring responsibilities. As I mentioned earlier, I ask the Minister to go away and look at the Maxwell hours, which have been successful for longer cases. For a morning session, it means that those who are self-employed are able to commit to working in the afternoons. In some cases, it means that those with caring responsibilities know that they are going to get home at a reasonable hour. The Maxwell hours are used in lots of different areas, and could be the answer to retaining the key principle of jury trials in fraud cases, while still ensuring a better experience for jurors.

Amendment 51 would prevent

“the Lord Chancellor adding further offences to the list in Schedule 1 by regulations.”

The concern is that it would give unconstrained power over the list of offences that may be heard without a jury on the basis that cases are considered complex or burdensome for jurors. That rationale could easily be extended to lengthy murder, rape, or drug trials.

As the shadow Minister mentioned, if the wording in schedule 1 specified fraud or that particular type of case, it would be a different matter. However, it does not; it just says “complex or lengthy”. The Minister makes the point that this is a complex area, and criminal offences are added all the time, but she also referred to the specific types of fraud cases. If she can include the provision of fraud in clause 1, that would provide a reassurance that there would not be additionality of scope. That is not to suggest that the current Lord Chancellor would be inclined to increase the scope, but a future Lord Chancellor may be able to extend the provision far beyond the huge change that the Government are already proposing.

Trials for things like terrorism, murder, rape and drug offences can last many months. They can be as complex as fraud cases, and they can involve multiple defendants and expert evidence. On that basis, the arguments that the Minister has made do not stand. That is why I will be voting against clause 4.

[Joe Robertson]

How long is a piece of string? The unanswerable question. I could ask another question: is a 2-metre piece of string a long piece of string? If I asked you that question, Ms Butler, you would have a lot of questions for me before you gave your answer, yet the Minister thinks it is easy to answer the question, “Is a two-week trial a long trial?”. She thinks it is obvious and that a judge will be able to make a decision. She is not willing to put a definition on that, because she says it is evident in the way that the Bill is drafted.

I look at the words in the Bill—which is all that a judge will have to make that decision. On length, it says that the judge will have to decide if the

“likely length of the trial…makes it appropriate for the trial to be conducted without a jury.”

On complexity, they will have to decide whether

“the likely complexity of the trial”

is

“appropriate for the trial to be conducted without a jury.”

It is even hard to decipher from that whether it means complex is good or bad for a jury. Complexity is just a description; it is not a value. This is incredibly unusual, novel and, I would say, badly worded legislation. Ordinarily, a provision of this sort would say something along the lines of: “If the court is satisfied that the length of trial is so long that it would make it unreasonable for a jury”. That would be more normal wording.

The principle of reasonableness, while giving discretion and, some might argue, a vague term in the English language, is a well-tested word in criminal law and the English legal system. We know what reasonableness means; it is an objective test—“What would an ordinary person think is reasonable?” What about appropriateness? Does that mean appropriate to that judge on that day? Does it mean appropriate to a particular, theoretical juror? There is absolutely no guidance in Bill about how this novel word, “appropriate”, should be interpreted. Even when there are words in legislation such as “reasonableness”, which are backed by decades or even centuries of case law, the judge is very often given guidance in the legislation as to what is and is not reasonable.

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[Yasmin Qureshi]

Amendments 34 and 71 are probing amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed). I will not be asking for them to be put to a vote.

Amendment 34 concerns magistrates’ sentencing powers. The amendment would remove the word “regulations” and insert

“made by the affirmative resolution procedure”

to prevent significant changes from being made to the sentencing powers of magistrates courts without a proper debate and vote in Parliament. If such changes are to be made, Parliament should fully discuss their impacts. Amendment 71 is consequential on amendment 34.

Clause 6 increases magistrates’ sentencing powers to 24 months. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many people, that represents a restriction on appeals. If sentencing powers are increased while access to appeals is reduced, which is what is being done in clause 7, the risks to fairness in the system are significantly heightened, particularly for those without legal representation, given that the rules for legal aid in the magistrates court are very different from those in the Crown court.

For those reasons, the Bill raises fundamental questions about fairness, trust and the proper functioning of the justice system. The solution to delay is not to remove our historical safeguards, but to fix the system. I ask the Minister to consider whether it is right to give the magistrates court the power to impose sentences of 24 months, which is a considerable period. If that is being contemplated, there should be a proper debate and a vote in Parliament; it should not be put through on the nod.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Amendment 13, which was tabled in my name, provides that magistrates’ sentencing powers cannot be increased beyond 12 months, which would keep the Bill in line with Leveson’s suggestions. The Government have failed to take into account the impact that increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers will have. Magistrates’ backlogs are increasing, and magistrates courts are not set up to take on more complex cases.

The Government are also making some bold assumptions about the speed at which magistrates can clear these cases. They have their own backlog to face, which stands at 379,000 cases and increasing. That is a 17% increase on the previous year, which comes alongside a major cut to the number of magistrates over the past decade or so, from 28,000 to just over 14,000. Removing the power of defendants to elect, plus the changes in sentencing powers, will increase the workload of magistrates courts, and the system will struggle to absorb that. Magistrates will be required to deal with more complex cases despite the summary nature of their jurisdiction. Either they will be unable to handle those cases and will send them to the Crown court, or they will risk delivering poor-quality justice, which would let down victims and defendants alike.

The cohort affected by this change consists by definition of defendants expected to receive a prison sentence of between one and two years. The impact assessment shows that the Government assume that each of these trials in the magistrates courts will be completed within just four hours. The impact assessment also assumes that cases involving a guilty plea will take just 30 minutes. Either the impact assessment is incorrect or these cases will not receive the scrutiny they deserve.

Our other amendment, amendment 21, would make changing the general limit on custodial sentences for either-way offences in the magistrates court possible by affirmative resolution only. It is very similar to amendment 34, which the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden spoke to on behalf of her hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central. The amendment would ensure that any changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers—if amendment 13, to limit their powers, is not passed—is subject to the affirmative procedure. It would give greater parliamentary oversight, as all changes would have to pass through a Delegated Legislation Committee. Leaving that to the discretion of the Lord Chancellor is not a strong enough condition; it does not provide enough scrutiny or protection against rogue actors. The measure was also recommended by the Law Society of England and Wales. It would provide just that protection, and would ensure that Parliament would have and maintain its say in matters.

[Siân Berry]

I will speak as quickly as I can. I support the amendments tabled in this group by the Liberal Democrats, which would limit any increase in the sentencing powers of magistrates beyond 12 months; amendment 34, which was moved by the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden; and the Liberal Democrat and Conservative amendments that would ensure that, if that limit is not accepted, any further changes are made by the affirmative resolution procedure.

I am sure we will all remind the Minister that Sir Brian Leveson specifically made his reforms to jury trials contingent on not increasing the sentencing powers of magistrates. He stated that specifically in paragraph 71 of his report. He also stated:

“My strong recommendation is that the maximum should remain at 12 months.”

That followed, in paragraph 70, another important caveat that the Government seem to have overlooked:

“While removing the right to elect for certain offences may streamline the judicial process and alleviate the burden on the higher courts, it raises concerns about balancing the right of the defendant with the broader interests of justice.”

We have to admit that the Government are taking a risk with the moves they are making. The magnitude and volume of that risk increase with the number of extra cases that are pushed to the magistrates courts through other provisions in the Bill, while the consequences of that risk increase with the higher sentences made possible under clause 6. This is not a step we should take alongside those other steps. They increase the risks to justice.

In oral evidence, we heard from Claire Davies, the leader of the south eastern circuit, who said of magistrates courts:

“There are errors and mistakes made, but if the length of sentence is extended, it will potentially increase that risk.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 51, Q99.]

We also heard from Emma Torr, from APPEAL, who described

“swift and speedy justice in the magistrates court. It is often rough and ready; we are talking about cases being tried by lay justices, some of whom may be experienced but some may not be, and we are also talking about less experienced judges. You often find in the lower court, the magistrates court, that advocates are more inexperienced and tend to be at the start of their career.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 86-87, Q185.]

This point was also emphasised by Fiona Rutherford, the chief executive of JUSTICE, who said:

“There is a question mark about the accuracy of the way in which magistrates are making decisions.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 82, Q174.]

These are the risks we are talking about compared with having a judge and jury.

Risks also come from the surrounding bureaucratic situation, which could lead to more defendants being unrepresented. When the shift is made, we will be leaving them without legal aid, because of the changes in the income requirements. We heard from Fiona Rutherford of JUSTICE that without this representation there could be additional risks to victims.

The Minister needs to admit that this part of the Bill goes too far. On top of the other things she is doing, she is adding more consequence, not just more volume, to the risk equation. That is a poor step to take. Clause 6 should not stand part, and I support all the amendments.

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[Sarah Sackman]

Amendment 10 is a technical amendment concerning magistrates court sentencing powers when imposing consecutive sentences for multiple summary offences.

The Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 introduced a power to vary the general limit on magistrates court sentencing powers for a single triable either-way offence between a maximum of six months or a maximum of 12 months. Clause 6(1) of the Bill amends that power so that the limit for a single triable either-way offence can be set at 18 months or 24 months, in addition to six months and 12 months.

As part of the changes in 2022, a consequential amendment was made to section 133 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, which makes provision in relation to consecutive terms of imprisonment imposed by a magistrates court. As a result, the maximum aggregate term of imprisonment that can be imposed for multiple summary-only offences cannot exceed the longest term that could be imposed for any one of those offences.

Therefore, where the highest maximum sentence for the individual offences is less than six months, the magistrates court cannot impose more than that maximum when imposing consecutive terms of imprisonment for multiple summary-only offences. For example, low-value criminal damage has a maximum sentence of three months’ custody. Therefore, in sentencing someone for two or more criminal damage offences, the magistrates court can impose only up to three months to be served consecutively, rather than six months.

As a result of this amendment, magistrates courts will be able to impose a maximum of six months’ custody consecutively for two or more summary only offences. That will ensure that magistrates courts can impose sentences that adequately reflect the overall offending behaviour, as consecutive sentences enable courts to proportionately reflect the overall criminality when multiple offences have been committed. Importantly, this amendment does not alter the statutory maximum penalties available for existing individual offences.

Amendment 10 agreed to.

Amendment made: 11, in clause 6, page 16, line 13, leave out “paragraph” and insert “paragraphs 16(a) and”.—(Sarah Sackman.)

This amendment is consequential on amendment 10.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 6, page 17, line 11, at end insert—

“(9) After section 15 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, insert—

‘15A Entitlement to Crown Court funding levels in certain proceedings in the Magistrates’ Court

(1) This section applies to criminal proceedings in a magistrates’ court where—

(a) an individual is charged with an either-way offence; and

(b) the court, having regard to the sentencing guidelines, considers it likely that a sentence of imprisonment exceeding 12 months will be imposed upon conviction.

(2) Where this section applies, any relevant representation order shall provide for remuneration at the same rates and under the same conditions as would apply if the proceedings were determined in the Crown Court.’”

This amendment links legal aid funding to the potential severity of the sentence rather than the venue of the trial. It ensures that defendants facing more than 12 months' imprisonment receive Crown Court level funding, regardless of which court the case is heard in.

The amendment would link legal aid funding to the potential severity of the sentence rather than the venue of the trial. It would ensure that defendants facing more than 12 months’ imprisonment received Crown court-level legal aid funding, regardless of which court the case was heard in.

The context of this is that the Bill’s equality statement acknowledges that

“if more cases are dealt with in the magistrates’ courts, it is likely that an increased proportion of these defendants may be ineligible for legal aid when they would otherwise have been eligible if their case had been heard at the Crown Court.”

That is because the eligibility threshold for receiving representation from a publicly funded lawyer in the magistrates court is an annual income of below £22,325—significantly lower than the Crown court threshold of £37,500. As a result, individuals in full-time minimum wage employment may not qualify for legal aid in the magistrates court.

Without that being addressed, it is clear that we will face an increase in the number of defendants attending court without legal representation, which undermines fairness for all those involved. Complainants, victims and witnesses may be cross-examined by the alleged perpetrator of the crime; it could slow proceedings down; it risks unfairness to the accused; and it means that the outcome of the cases will depend on whether the defendant can afford expensive lawyers, not on the true justice of the case. That concern is compounded by the fact that clause 6 provides magistrates with greater sentencing powers, meaning that defendants will be facing more serious cases. It will also prolong hearings, which will reduce the savings the Government claim they will make by shifting cases into the magistrates court.

Our amendment would ensure that, if the Government’s plans are implemented, which we oppose, legal aid would be linked to the sentence length, ensuring that those who face longer sentences in the magistrates court received the funding they would expect in the Crown court. There is a lower threshold for legal aid in the magistrates court because it is assumed that cases will be shorter and simpler. That will no longer be the case, with more serious cases taking place that could take days to complete. Our amendment would avoid concerns about two-tier justice and an increase in the number of defendants appearing in court without legal representation.

[Siân Berry]

It is very good to see you in the Chair this evening, Ms Jardine; thank you for looking after us. I will speak very briefly in support of the amendment, to which I have added my name. I have spoken already about the many risks piling up with the Bill, and this amendment is one essential mitigation for some of those risks. If the Government press ahead, they cannot ignore it.

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[Sarah Sackman]

I thank the hon. Member for Chichester for tabling the amendment, because the issue and importance of legal aid is something that I think we both care deeply about. Access to justice is a fundamental principle within our justice system; it is fundamental to the fairness of processing criminal cases through our courts. But if I am vociferous, I think it is entirely justified. We are a Government stretching every sinew to put our legal aid sector back on a sustainable footing.

That, by the way, is not simply a matter of increased fees, although we have done that and are continuing to do so. The inheritance we received—I say this not just as the Courts Minister responsible for the legal aid system—regarding the whole infrastructure of legal aid and the IT systems on which that was built, was wholly inadequate. It is no surprise, then, that the minute there is a cyber-attack, the whole thing keels over.

One of the difficulties with these fees is actually implementing them. We cannot implement them overnight because of the lack of investment, as well as the cutting of fees, that took place over 14 years. What we have done, as one of our first steps, is make significant uplifts to criminal legal aid fees for criminal solicitors, focusing on duty solicitors and prison lawyers—precisely the people we need to deliver this court transformation. That has already been implemented; we have an additional £116 million a year once in steady state. And we have announced the funding that is to come as part of these reforms, with £34 million for criminal legal aid advocates, alongside a commitment to match-fund criminal barrister pupillages to open up the pipeline to people from all backgrounds and to build our workforce.

So that is pragmatism, principle, social mobility and investment. No one could doubt the passion and commitment, as well as the investment, in transforming the infrastructure so badly needed to implement these criminal legal aid fees, and indeed the civil legal aid fees, which, by the way, we are also uplifting. This investment reflects the valuable and tough decisions that we have had to take, and the valuable and tough work undertaken by those who work in the criminal justice system. It will help them to ensure that justice is served.

Turning to the specifics of amendment 22, under the current financial eligibility rules, the Government are confident that the majority of defendants charged with either-way offences are expected to be eligible for legal aid at the magistrates court. For individuals who do not qualify for legal aid, there are already measures in place in the magistrates court to provide some support. The hardship review mechanism can provide support to those who fail or who do not meet the means test for legal aid but face higher than usual outgoings or expenses associated with their case. In addition, unrepresented defendants may also receive support via the free duty solicitor scheme, which we are investing in and that can provide representation at a first hearing if required.

In terms of remuneration for legal aid lawyers, legal aid fee schemes are specific to the court where the case is heard and are designed to reflect the differing processes and nature of work in the magistrates court and Crown court. The magistrates court fee scheme is designed to be simpler to administer and use for providers, reflecting the greater speed and volume of cases going through that court. Providers appreciate the greater simplicity. A non-standard fee route exists for exceptional cases to ensure that work on more complex cases is appropriately remunerated. Fees and financial eligibility conditions at magistrates courts can already provide representation for defendants facing potentially longer sentences if convicted of an either-way offence.

We remain committed to the provision of legal aid and recognise the vital role that it plays in underpinning access to justice. We will keep our approach to the rules that govern financial eligibility across legal aid under review, including by carefully assessing the impact of all the recommendations made by the independent review of the criminal courts and the final formation of the Bill before taking further decisions. In the light of that explanation, I hope the hon. Member for Chichester will agree to withdraw her amendment.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the hon. Members for Bexhill and Battle and for Bolton South and Walkden for their contributions to the discussion on amendment 22.

I recognise that thresholds exist for a reason, but people earning £22,325 are not making a different consideration from somebody earning £23,325. They are lucky if they get to the end of the month with any money left in their bank account, let alone being able to consider paying for an hour’s legal advice. Even the concept of contacting a law firm and asking for simple, early-stage advice is going to feel totally alien to these people, because they do not have the funds to be able to do that. So thresholds exist for a reason, but the Government need to do a piece of work on where those thresholds land, because with the cost of living crisis, it is really hard in this country for people to afford to exist, let alone to afford the additional pressures that a case being heard in a magistrates court would put upon them.

The Minister said that access to justice is a fundamental principle. I agree entirely, and I know how strongly she feels about making sure that legal aid is fit for purpose. We have had many conversations about that, and I am confident that we will continue to do so. I know she will vote against the amendment, but that does not mean that I will not push it to a vote, because it is important to get how important legal aid provision is on the record. This conversation is not over, and I am sure the Minister will agree to carry it on.

[Sarah Sackman]

indicated assent.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Dr Mullan]

I oppose clause 6, which, as we have discussed, grants the Lord Chancellor the power to increase the maximum sentencing limit in magistrates courts from the current 12 months to 18 or even 24 months. While the Government present that as a necessary measure to relieve the backlog in the Crown court, we must look closely at what is being sacrificed in the name of speed.

This proposal is not a minor adjustment; it is a fundamental shift in the nature of summary justice. It would allow magistrates—volunteers who have to sit only 13 days a year and who on average sit 17 to 23 days—to deprive a citizen of their liberty for up to two years. That expansion of power comes at a time when the system is already under immense strain in the magistrates courts, and it is the view of the Criminal Bar Association, JUSTICE, the Bar Council and others that this move is unnecessary and potentially unsafe for the integrity of our legal system.

The central concern shared by legal professionals is that magistrates courts are simply not designed to handle the complexity of cases that may, at some point, carry two-year sentences. As the Criminal Bar Association pointed out in its evidence, the “practices and procedures” of those courts are “necessarily ‘summary’ in nature.” They were built for the swift disposal of what some consider to be minor offences, not for the intricate legal and factual disputes that characterise more serious crimes. The Criminal Bar Association has been blunt in its assessment, calling the extension of summary justice to cases carrying two-year terms a “recipe for rough justice”. That concern is backed by the Government’s own impact assessment, which assumes that magistrates will complete those more serious trials in just a few hours. As the CBA notes, that assumption is

“clearly naïve in the extreme”.

Either the cases will not receive the scrutiny they deserve, or the predicted time savings will never materialise.

One of the most troubling aspects of increasing sentencing powers is the legal aid gap. Given that we were unsuccessful with amendment 53, it is important to reiterate the impact of that gap when considering the clause as a whole. At present, the income threshold to qualify for a publicly funded lawyer is significantly lower in the magistrates courts, at £22,305, than in the Crown court, at £37,500.

JUSTICE has highlighted the severe unfairness that this creates. Individuals in full-time, minimum-wage employment, who would be eligible for legal aid in the Crown court, will find themselves ineligible in the magistrates courts. We face a reality where a defendant could be facing a two-year prison sentence while being forced to represent themselves, because they cannot afford a lawyer and do not qualify for state support. As JUSTICE warns, unrepresented defendants are often observed to receive harsher sentences, as they do not know how to mitigate. We cannot call a system just if it increases the stakes of a trial, while simultaneously stripping away the means for a professional defence.

We must also confront the impact of these changes on minority communities. The Bar Council and JUSTICE both point to the findings of the 2017 Lammy review, as it is referred to in shorthand, which identified juries as a

“success story of our justice system”,

because they do not appear to discriminate between different ethnic groups when returning verdicts. However, the review found that the positive story of jury equity was not matched in magistrates courts. The Minister has previously spoken about the lack of disparity in sentencing outcomes, for example, but specific statistical analysis showed that black, Asian and mixed ethnic women were more likely to be convicted—conviction is the question we are considering here—in magistrates courts than white women.

We have discussed before how that may not necessarily be a direct causal relationship, as it could just be correlation. However, as the Lammy review points out, it is incumbent on Governments of any colour—Conservative, Labour or whatever they might be—to justify and explain those disparities. As we have discussed previously, we have not managed to justify and explain them, yet we are introducing measures that could potentially exacerbate them.

Beyond ethnicity, the Lammy review noted a great cultural gulf between predominantly white, middle-class judges and magistrates and the defendants appearing before them. By forcing more serious cases into the magistrates court, and removing the right of defendants to elect a jury trial, the Government are moving cases away from the most trusted and equitable part of our justice system into one where public trust, at least for some communities, is already fragile. JUSTICE notes that any reform that reduces choice risks deepening existing disparities and exacerbating distrust for minoritised communities.

The Government’s primary justification is efficiency, but the Bar Council argues that these reforms will likely consume resources without bringing down the backlog. As we have said, there is also a challenge with the backlog in the magistrates courts, which are currently facing their own record high of 370,000 cases. The system is also facing a critical shortage of magistrates and legal advisers. The loss of sitting days due to the absence of legal advisers, who are often trainees, even for better-paid work, is a persistent problem. Some estimates suggest that there are more than 20,000 sitting days-worth of work from professional judges in the Crown court. Expecting that to be absorbed into an overstretched and shrinking cohort of volunteers in the magistrates courts would, as the CBA describes,

“transfer the burden from one over-stretched part of the system to another.”

Finally, we must look at how the clause interacts with the rest of the Bill. While clause 6 increases power at the lower level, clause 7 restricts the ability to challenge those decisions by removing the automatic right of appeal and replacing it with a permission-based model. The Bar Council describes this combination as

“a comprehensive rolling back of safeguards.”

At present, around 40% of appeals against conviction from magistrates courts are successful, and 47% of appeals against sentence are upheld, demonstrating that the lower courts frequently make meaningful errors. Doubling their sentencing powers, while simultaneously making it harder for a defendant to correct a wrong conviction, is a dangerous path to take.

It is also worth noting that the Bill departs from the recommendations of the very review that it claims to implement. Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the current 12-month maximum should be made permanent. I draw attention to a previous response from the Minister, when she again raised the possibility that the review invited the Government to go further. We have discussed that this might be a relevant argument to make if, for example, we were talking about a recommendation on which the review did not clearly oppose the Government going further.

If I was Brian Leveson, I would feel a bit like I was being mugged off by the Government, because they are saying, “We agree with what you want to do, but we’re going ignore you on the position that you are fundamentally clear on. Indeed, we’re not only ignoring your specific recommendation, we’re ignoring what you said about the other recommendations being contingent on the Government doing this thing around controlling the sentencing”. It is doubly insulting to Sir Brian to then suggest, as the Minister did, that he would be relaxed about this, and that he invited them to go further. Certainly, no reasonable person would interpret his suggestion in that way.

There is also a question about the numbers. We know Sir Brian’s central recommendation is that we reach 130,000 sitting days. That is the number that he arrived at. We must assume that he has arrived at that number contingent on the Government sticking to his advice that we do not increase the maximum sentencing powers of the magistrates. If the Government are claiming that that will be a further 8,000 sitting days, there must be some juggling with the figures. If the Government are seeking to achieve 130,000, and Sir Brian thinks that is the right number, and the Government’s plan has got an additional 8,000 that Sir Brian never envisioned, does that mean we have 8,000 to play with in some other regard that Sir Brian did not understand? Can the Minister explain how we have ended up with the same figures and the same goal, but in a completely different way, with a further 8,000 that Sir Brian never anticipated or wanted?

We also heard the argument that this is fine because the youth courts do it. We had that argument in an earlier sitting, and I made it clear that there are some fundamental differences. It really undermines the concept of having a specialist court if what goes on in that specialist court is then used to support an argument of general application. That goes against the whole point of a specialist court—we have gone out of our way in that case, because we recognise that the circumstances are special. For example, the types of custody, the implications for criminal records and the style in which cross-examination happens are all different in the youth court and the adult estate. We must therefore recognise that we are in a completely different position.

The Minister also talked about how the negative resolution procedure is already used in this area. The crucial difference is that we are taking a leap to 24 months, in terms of the impact of these decisions. What might have arguably been permissible at the lower end of the threshold does not automatically translate into an assumption that it is therefore appropriate at the higher end of the threshold. It is because the measure will apply towards the higher end of threshold that we think it is inappropriate. We failed to persuade the Government, and as a result this clause remains concerning.

In summary, the proposal to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers to 24 months is a move towards cheaper, faster justice that is likely to be neither cheap nor fast, and it will certainly not be just. It risks creating a surge of unrepresented defendants, exacerbating racial disproportionality and displacing the backlog into a court jurisdiction that is structurally ill-equipped to handle it. We should not trade away fundamental procedural protections for a marginal gain in court sitting days.

If we want to solve the backlog, we should focus on the low-hanging fruit identified by the Bar Council and others: open all existing courtrooms, more than 10% of which are closed today and were closed yesterday; fix prisoner transport, an issue that costs us thousands of days every year; and properly resource the legal profession. We must reject the 24-month limit and maintain the 12-month cap to ensure that serious custodial decisions remain subject to the full rigour and safeguards of our Crown courts.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Clause 6 expands the Secretary of State’s regulation-making power to change the general limit on the custodial sentence that a magistrates court may impose. It replaces the current list of possible maximum terms—six or 12 months—with a new list of six, 12, 18 or 24 months. That will allow the Secretary of State, by regulation, to change the general limit within these set terms.

The sentencing powers of the magistrates court were increased in 2022 from six months to 12 months. This clause would allow the Lord Chancellor to further increase the maximum by statutory instrument to either 18 or 24 months. The result will be more triable either-way cases being heard in the magistrates court. The practical reason we oppose the clause is that magistrates courts are facing their own increasing list—Members can decide whether they want to call it a backlog or a list. I recognise the Minister’s comments that we should not describe the 379,000 cases waiting in the magistrates courts as a backlog and I agree with her assessment that we need a certain number of cases in order for the magistrates court to function.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Ninth sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I will speak to amendments 64 to 66, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central.

We have had a discussion about this provision. The amendments seek to give a right to renew an application for permission to appeal orally, and to allow grounds for appeal to raise issues of procedure and fact arising in the trial, as well as issues of law. Clause 7 currently suggests that a person can only appeal in writing on matters of law, which means that a person is going to have to construct a proper legal argument. The problem with that is that the majority of people in the magistrates court are unrepresented.

It is wrong to say that this is comparable with Crown court cases going to the Court of Appeal, or the higher courts having to deal with the issue of leave to appeal—for example, as in judicial review. Magistrates courts tend to have some very “minor” offences leading to some quite serious repercussions. When I say “minor”, I am talking only in terms of sentencing, because we must remember that offences that we call minor can have a significant impact on a defendant’s life—for example, even drink driving, which does normally not carry a custodial sentence, certainly carries a disqualification.

That is also often a mandatory disqualification so that no discretion is given to the magistrates as to whether they should disqualify somebody. If someone is the sole breadwinner, or has care of a disabled person, and they feel that this conviction was wrong, they will not have the right to appeal—because very rarely will somebody charged with those matters will be getting legal aid.

However, in the Crown court, most people will have legal aid or be using legal advice at some point, because the trial will normally be conducted by solicitors or lawyers. Therefore, they are already being paid and if there is an appeal against either conviction or sentence, they already know what they are talking about and what they need to quote—the legal jurisprudence that they need to refer to, to prove their case—along with the issues with examining the witnesses or the evidence that has been given. They are then able to say, for example, that a particular witnesses’ evidence was not credible or that a witness said contradictory things or different things in their statement to the police compared with during the trial. They can do that because they have conducted the trial and they can forensically examine what happened—not only what legal direction the judge gave, but the factual evidence that came out during the trial. In the magistrates court, most people are not represented, so they cannot argue all those things.

To take away the automatic right to appeal is, therefore, a change to the fundamental basic rights of an individual. Let us remember that the state has all the might and all the resources, and that professionals will be prosecuting—whether they are lay prosecutors, Crown prosecutors or independent lawyers. On the one side, there will be the state represented by legal professionals; on the other, there will be the lone individual coming up by themselves to be subject to trial. If they are then not satisfied with the conviction or the sentence, they must then think how to legally write an appeal. That is putting a lot of pressure on them.

As Members of Parliament, many of us will have met many constituents who are quite reluctant to even write to us. I often say to constituents, “Please can you drop us an email?” and they say, “Well, I don’t know how to use a computer, and I don’t have the internet at home.” We then make a face-to-face appointment so that they can explain themselves. That is not unusual because a lot of people are not able to write very well and would not be in a position to construct a coherent legal argument as to why they should have their appeal in the Crown court.

Sometimes, when we are talking about possible efficiencies and saving money, we forget about individuals. People who come before the criminal justice system tend to be from poorer backgrounds and are often less well educated. Some of them may well be unemployed. A lot of them have other issues going on in their lives. Therefore, the fact that they can appeal to the Crown court automatically in the current system is an immense safeguard for them.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making an important point that we have not really discussed on the Committee. It is estimated that half the prison population have a reading age of less than 11; that is to say, they are counted as functionally illiterate. We have seen a decline in prison education. How does she expect all these prison inmates to be able to negotiate or navigate an appeals process?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

That is exactly the point I am trying to make. I think we sometimes forget, sitting in our rarefied environment, that a lot of the people out there—our citizens—are not well educated or able to write a proper paragraph or construct an argument. Sometimes they can just about get two or three simple sentences together. As they often do not have legal representation, allowing them to automatically appeal against a sentence or conviction is a really important safeguard for them. The Crown court and Court of Appeal criminal division is not the right comparison, because in most Crown court cases people have full legal representation who will be able to advise on this.

The other thing we found is that apparently 40% of appeals are successful. Think about that: four out of 10 appeals are successful. If people do not have a right to appeal, they have to find a way to make a legal argument on matters of law, which they know very little about. Asking them to do that is basically letting four out of 10 people be convicted or receive a sentence that could have an impact on their lives.

On sentences, when a conviction happens, even if it is in the magistrates court, it fundamentally affects people’s lives. It could mean that they are not able to get a job again or are dismissed from the job they have. If someone’s job involves driving and they are disqualified because of drink driving, that will be an extra burden on them, but it is not just that. Even if someone gets a suspended sentence or community service order for what we call smaller offences, a lot of people are not able to do that. Taking away their right to appeal is, with respect, very harsh.

Legal aid has already been reduced considerably over the years. I have to put the blame for that on the Conservatives, because they massively cut legal aid while in government. They also massively restricted the rights of judicial review. In that respect, I have to hold the Conservatives a bit responsible for what they did in 14 years in power. I am very grateful that the Labour Government have put money into legal aid—that is great—but I ask them to please give that to the magistrates court as well.

I have travelled in different parts of the world where the justice system is perhaps a bit haphazard or where there is not much trust in the state’s justice system, for whatever reason. It does not necessarily have to do with the wealth of a country; there are very wealthy countries where the state is much more authoritarian and the institutions are almost stacked against the individual. The one thing that people really love about the UK, apart from our beautiful country and everything else, is our judicial system. I am not just saying that; it is the most respected system in the world, especially our criminal justice system, because people feel that they have protection at the point that their liberties are being taken away.

Think about a conviction for shoplifting: people say, “Oh, shoplifting,” but even if someone takes a bottle of milk out of a shop, they may get a conviction and there will be hundreds of jobs that they can never apply for. For a lot of people who rely on shop work or other manual jobs where they may come across money, it means that they are never going to get a job. If they get a conviction in the magistrates court for theft, that is devastating for them. The Theft Act refers to the “intention of permanently depriving”. That is quite important, because people make mistakes, but intention has to be proved, because the Theft Act requires it. It is not just taking the thing; it is the intention to permanently deprive. How do we define “permanently deprive”? A layperson would not know how to construct that argument, but a lawyer would.

--- Later in debate ---

I will not press the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. However, it is important to bring to the Government’s attention the real-life situation of ordinary, working people—our constituents, who we see on a daily basis. We all know how they are. Most of them are quite nervous; a lot are quite scared. Sometimes they are even frightened and nervous about meeting their Member of Parliament. Those vulnerable people are the ones most likely to end up in the criminal justice system. Let us look after our vulnerable people and reconsider this provision.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.

Clause 7 and schedule 2 will restrict the right to appeal the decision of a magistrates court to the Crown court, and will change the process that those appeals go through. Currently, a defendant has an automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court against either conviction or sentence; in either case, the appeal is a hearing before a judge and two magistrates. The Bill will instead introduce a requirement for an application for permission to appeal based on written grounds. A Crown court judge will decide whether to grant permission, and the appeal hearing would be heard by a single judge. Instead of a rehearing, the appeal would be only on the issues on which permission is granted. If the appeal is against conviction, the judge must allow the appeal if the conviction is unsafe. If so, the judge may order a retrial in the magistrates court.

It is not unreasonable to have a conversation about the appeals process, especially as there is a small amount of evidence of the system being abused by a very small minority of defendants who believe that the appeal will be successful on the grounds that the victim or witnesses will refuse to go through the experience again. I absolutely recognise that, and we need to put essential safeguards into the criminal justice system to provide greater protection for those victims. We will be getting to the crux of that issue over the next days in Committee.

However, clause 7 and schedule 2 are blunt instruments that will harm access to justice. We cannot ignore the fact that although a very small number of cases from the magistrates—less than 1%—go to appeal, more than 40% of those are successful at appeal. Given that the magistrates court will be hearing more complex cases that carry higher sentences, the measures will increase the risk of miscarriages of justice. Touching the appeals process at this point is unnecessary when it is currently sparingly used. The Criminal Bar Association has argued:

“Access to justice will be harmed. Who is going to find the lawyers who have time to review transcripts of evidence and prepare grounds of appeal? Who is going to pay them for that work? What about the defendants who were ineligible for Legal Aid, because of the lower cut off for eligibility?”

We discussed the eligibility cut-off in the previous clause.

JUSTICE has raised similar concerns, stating that replacing the automatic right of appeal with a multi-stage permission system

“is complicated and highly likely to be inefficient”,

and will fail defendants who cannot navigate these processes, as laid out articulately and clearly by the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden.

The current process means that appeals are heard by a judge and two magistrates. The opportunity for magistrates to sit with a Crown court judge to hear appeals is an important one, as it helps with the training of magistrates and drives up standards. Under the Bill, there are no circumstances in which lay justices would sit with professional judges. We are debating a number of amendments, some of which seek to restore the conditions we have right now—retaining the automatic right to appeal—and some that go further, although I think the shadow Minister suggested that he would not press them all to a vote.

I would appreciate the Minister’s explaining whether she thinks the processes being put in place by clause 7 and schedule 2 are compatible with the principles of access to justice that she has laid out previously in Committee. I remain gravely concerned that the measures will have a huge impact on the most vulnerable in society.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I am happy to have you back in the Chair today, Dr Huq. I wish to oppose the clause and the schedule. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden for pointing out so clearly that the restrictions on appeals will push down hardest on the least advantaged people and will compound injustices in wider society, as well as the injustices put in place by other clauses.

I will not reiterate in detail the evidence we heard, or the speeches I made previously, about the risks of more errors due to the speedier but rougher and readier justice of the magistrates courts being applied to more cases, or the risks arising from higher sentences. However, clause 7 adds yet more risk to the potential harm from reducing the right to select a jury trial in clause 1 and the restrictions put in place by other clauses. This is counterproductive for the overall courts workload, too.

As others have pointed out, the clause will introduce a multi-step process. We heard in oral evidence from Emma Torr of Appeal that the

“multi-step process…will only increase the workload of both the magistrates and Crown courts. To give a very brief outline of how it works at the moment, the defendant or the solicitor can fill out a very simple form, which results in a quick rehearing at the Crown court. It takes a couple of hours at most and even less for sentence appeals.”

She also pointed out that the Law Commission had carefully considered the matter last year in a consultation paper that ran to 700 pages. She said:

“Its independent analysis was that the removal of the automatic right to appeal will increase the workload of the magistrates court and the Crown court.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 83, Q174.]

In our oral evidence sessions, we heard clear views about the lack of legal aid in magistrates courts for people without representation to meet fairly the test set for appeals. Fiona Rutherford of JUSTICE told us:

“Without a lawyer being present, and of course without there even being the right to appeal directly, you are leaving a whole load of defendants, who may well be wrongly convicted or may get the wrong sentence for the crime they have committed, floundering…I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward.” ––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 86, Q184.]

These are serious matters of injustice. I do not know how the least advantaged defendants will be able to do anything to use the application to the High Court for judicial review, which seems to be the only remedy that the Minister has put forward to us today. I do not know how many miscarriages of justice are acceptable to the Minister, but I believe that these measures must not form part of the Bill, because of the impact that they will have on the right to justice for too many people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move amendment 17, in schedule 2, page 52, line 5, leave out “on payment of a fee” and insert—

“to victims of criminal offence without a fee within 14 days of a request”.

This amendment would make magistrates’ court transcripts free for victims and requires that such transcripts are provided within 14 days of a request.

I first acknowledge that the Government have made steps to improve access to court transcripts after robust negotiations in both Houses and on various Bills, most recently the Sentencing Act 2026, the Victims and Court Bill and now this Bill.

I also put on record the exemplary effort made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who has been campaigning to ensure that court transcripts are made available for free for victims of crime, after her constituent was quoted thousands of pounds to access the transcript of her own court case. Nobody should be priced out of seeing their own story.

Why are transcripts important? For many victims, they choose not to attend the entirety of a hearing or trial. Even if they do, there is so much to take in. Being able to process the events of the court case provides a valuable opportunity to better understand why decisions were made and hopefully enables them to move on with their lives.

The Committee had the privilege of listening to the testimony of Charlotte Meijer, alongside other victims, Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott and Morwenna Loughman. I would like to remind Members of a few of the things that Charlotte said. She said:

“For me, having transparency really changes things. We talk about justice and the system being closed, so if we have more recording and transcripts, it will really help people. There is something that is not in the Bill that I would love to see; I have fought for the last three years for sentencing remarks to be made free, which we did earlier this year, but I believe that is not going to extend to magistrates courts. If they are now being recorded, my belief is that they should also be free in that way.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 25, Q49.]

Charlotte spoke about her experience. She did not feel that she could listen to the trial after she had given her evidence, because it was a very small bench and the defendant’s family and friends were sat there. She did not feel like she could go and sit and listen, so she left, but she had indicated that she would like to be there for the sentencing or the hearing. However, she just got a call from her independent sexual violence adviser telling her that he had been found not guilty. She was not given the opportunity to hear that. Charlotte continued:

“For my healing, and for me to be able to move on, I just needed to understand what was said in court, so I went to ask for the transcripts, of which of course in the magistrates courts there are none.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 26, Q51.]

It is important for victims of crime and victims who see their perpetrators found not guilty to have the opportunity to process that by seeing what happened, whether they were in the room or outside it. The transcript can also be a tool for those who choose to apply to the unduly lenient sentences scheme, which I am pleased that the Government have agreed to improve significantly, after working alongside Baroness Brinton in the other place.

I recognise the concerns raised by the Government, particularly about the cost of producing transcripts and the processing time for redaction, which is all currently contracted out. I am pleased that they have agreed to a proactive trial of AI in courtrooms to improve transcripts, and to a move to record all magistrate hearings. I know that that approach has cross-party support; I have been in the Chamber with many Labour MPs and MPs of other parties who have made exactly the same arguments that I am making now, that providing free court transcripts is a key step towards transparency.

The Minister knows that we have worked collaboratively on reducing the scope in other Bills and have called on the Government to provide judicial summings-up and the route to verdict, including for those whose defendants are acquitted, because there is still a process that they need to go through. I am keen to work with the Government on this. I hope that as the Bill progresses through the House, we can continue the good work that has started on court transcripts.

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 17, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Chichester. I acknowledge the progress that we have made on the issue; it has not been as fast or as good as personally I would like, but it has absolutely been progress. The hon. Member has laid out some of the important points.

The idea that we will record these proceedings and that the transcripts will exist, but that the victim cannot have them, is obviously not sustainable. If they do not exist at all and nobody has them, that is one thing, but when they are available and some people might be accessing them—defendants, for example—it is really not reasonable that victims cannot, for all the reasons that we have discussed in relation to the Crown court. The existence of recordings will make that less of an excuse. Again, the interaction of different elements of the Bill, with longer sentences, restricted appeals and more serious cases being heard, builds an even stronger case for victims to have access to the transcripts.

The hon. Member for Chichester mentioned the unduly lenient sentence scheme. As we talked about in the context of Crown court appeals and the current use of the scheme, it is pretty hard to appeal an unduly lenient sentence if we do not even have access to the route to sentencing that the judge laid out to explain why they gave the sentence that they did. In my understanding, we have a later amendment that asks for an expansion in the use of the scheme in order for it to be meaningful. We talk about the unduly lenient sentence scheme, but people cannot access it in the magistrates court, even though we are about to put more serious cases into that court. At the minute, people are able to access the scheme when a case is heard in the Crown court. For those reasons, we enthusiastically support the hon. Member’s amendment.

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[Sarah Sackman]

It is context specific, which is exactly why we have a study: to test the level of accuracy. Accuracy is really important; we do not want a lot of judicial time to be taken up reviewing the accuracy of transcripts before they can be put out. That would not be a good use of judge time, which should be spent running trials and getting them concluded. In some contexts, most obviously in family law, redaction is really important.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

On the shadow Minister’s point, does the Minister agree that, especially for victims of serious crime, there can often be things in court transcripts that might, without giving addresses, clearly describe the location where something happened? Although the shadow Minister is right to say that anybody can attend a trial, that could be used subsequently to retraumatise somebody, because they would be aware of exactly where something happened. It could also identify someone’s address, for example if it refers to the corner shop at the end of their road: even if the address may be redacted, the detail is not always. Does the Minister agree that redaction plays a really important part in protecting vulnerable witnesses and victims?

[Sarah Sackman]

Yes, I do. This is why we have to get this right. As I say, we are firmly committed to improving transparency across the system and making a success of it, but those changes have to be balanced against the operational realities and the financial realities in which our court system operates.

Proposed new section 108S of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, to be inserted by schedule 2 to the Bill, will already provide the power for the rules of court to provide free transcripts to any person the Secretary of State directs. The amendment is therefore not required, as the intended effect will already be achieved under the current drafting.

We have taken significant steps to strengthen transparency, including expanding transcript provision, so that all victims who want them will be able to request free transcripts of Crown court sentencing remarks directly relevant to their case from as early as spring 2027. That is a meaningful step forward for victims. In cases of public interest, Crown court sentencing remarks are already published online, and broadcasters are able to film sentencing remarks in the Crown court with the agreement of the judge.

We are focused on driving improvement for the longer term, exploring how technology, including AI, can reduce the cost of transcript production in future and make it more widely available. That is why we are undertaking a study into the use of AI transcription in court hearings. All this work will provide this Parliament and future Parliaments with an evidence base for future decisions about how transcript provision could be expanded in a way that is operationally sustainable and delivers real-world benefits for victims, including in the magistrates court, over time, as recording capability expands.

[Sarah Sackman]

The hon. Lady raises a valid point. All sorts of work needs to be undertaken about the use of social media in courtrooms, whether by juries or other participants, and where that is and is not appropriate, particularly in the context of reporting restrictions that are put in place for a good reason. But on this point, we think that the amendment is not needed. We can continue to make progress informed by an evidence base. For those reasons, although we are in real consensus on the principle of this, I urge the hon. Member for Chichester to withdraw her amendment.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I appreciate the Minister’s constructive collaboration on this issue, but as it is my job to hold the Government’s feet to the fire, I will press amendment 17 to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Tenth sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Rape Crisis has pointed out that current practice ignores the fact that women are often subjected to multiple instances of sexual violence in their lives. Survivors have told Rape Crisis that they feel disbelieved, blamed and retraumatised when they simply try to seek justice. SafeLives and End Violence Against Women are both in favour of the reforms in clause 10. It is worth pointing out that black and minoritised women are disproportionately harmed in the criminal justice system by misuse of bad character evidence.

Office for National Statistics data shows that one in two adult survivors of rape have been raped more than once. The National Police Chiefs’ Council strategic risk assessment 2023 identified that 25% of victim survivors were repeat victims of violence against women and girls. The drafting of clause 10 reflects calls from a coalition of women’s rights groups for section 100 to be amended in this way. It was drafted and supported by the Centre for Women’s Justice, and the Liberal Democrats are pleased to support it.

[Sarah Sackman]

I welcome the support from Members across the Committee for clause 10. A proper evidential basis is defined in the Bill as ensuring that there is material before the court that shows both that the complainant made the previous allegation and that the previous allegation was false. I do not want to elaborate on the test, and thereby in any way tie the hands of the judge hearing the evidence in the case. The tests and the clear structure set out in the Bill will enable and empower the judge to test whether there is an evidential basis for the claim and whether it has probative value and relevance to the issues at hand. The judge will then be able to take a view on whether it can be included and put to a witness.

There will always be cases where the evidence is relevant to the proceedings, both for the prosecution and for the defence. There is certainly no hard rule excluding it altogether.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Clause 12 addresses an important aspect of protection: the use of screens in the courtroom. We must start from the position that special measures are not a luxury or optional administrative add-on; they are often essential to ensuring that the justice system remains capable of hearing evidence properly. We want to enable people to give evidence in the proper way, and victims and vulnerable witnesses must be able to give their best evidence—we always want people to be able to give their best evidence in court—without avoidable distress, intimidation or re-traumatisation.

For many, the prospect of being in the same physical space as the person who harmed them is a primary barrier to their participating in the justice system at all. Clause 12 will strengthen and clarify current provisions by creating a clearer statutory footing for the use of screens. Specifically, when a witness is providing testimony via live link or through a pre-recorded cross-examination, the clause will require the court to consider whether a screen should be provided. Crucially, the clause clarifies that that protection should operate in both directions: not just preventing the witness from seeing the accused, but shielding the witness from the accused’s gaze as well. That increased clarity is intended to support consistency in practice across the country.

For many victims, particularly those of sexual violence or domestic abuse, the physical presence of the accused is a source of profound distress that can affect their memory and the clarity of their evidence. The current application of these measures can be inconsistent, leading to what practitioners describe as a postcode lottery. By establishing a presumption in favour of screens unless it would be contrary to the interests of justice, the law recognises the practical reality. However, we must ensure that that presumption is not merely a tick-box exercise, but achieved effectively through things such as either-way screens.

We must recognise, as we have at several points in Committee, the challenge presented by the fabric of some of our courtroom buildings and their facilities. Evidence provided to the Committee—this is also highlighted by Sir Brian Leveson—suggests that malfunctioning equipment and poor infrastructure continue to create problems, specifically in relation to using special measures. A stronger use of screens can be mandated but, if the physical layout of the court and its facilities are insufficient, that will hamper the clause’s benefit.

What survey or review have the Government undertaken, or do they plan to undertake, to ensure that there are no physical barriers to the use of screens in this way? I suspect that, on a physical basis, it is easier to have screens just in one direction rather than two, and it probably involves different equipment and facilities. It would be good to get the Minister’s view on any barriers that might practically limit the intention of this measure.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Clause 12 stipulates that when a direction allows evidence by live link or pre-recorded cross examination, screens must also be provided unless that would be contrary to the interests of justice, such as due to preventing the adequate testing of evidence. It also clarifies under a special measure direction that a screen may be used to prevent either the witness from seeing the accused or the accused from seeing the witness. The Liberal Democrats welcome the clause.

Vulnerable and intimidated witnesses are entitled to a number of additional measures to protect them from defendants. When the Law Commission conducted a review of these measures in relation to sexual offences cases, it came up with a number of recommendations, although the Government have chosen not to take forward some of them, such as introducing automatic entitlement for sexual offence complainants or providing complainants with independent legal advice on their entitlement to special measures.

It would be helpful to understand from the Minister why the Government chose not to introduce those recommendations, which would have turned special measures into almost standard measures. The blanket introduction of these measures would save administrative time and cost. I recognise that this is anecdotal, but the judges I have spoken to have said that if they get a request for special measures, they never refuse it.

Surely by reversing the onus and introducing the special measures as standard, we would still provide an opportunity for victims to opt out of those measures if they have a particular desire to see, or to look into the eyes of, their defendant, but if they did not wish to do so, they would be, at the very minimum, provided with protections. If this was the standard approach, it would also give more women—this affects mostly women—the confidence to come forward knowing that their court experience is going to protect them.

On a recent visit to Chichester Crown court—I thank the Minister for committing to reopening that court fully—His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service talked about creating videos for those who are coming to give evidence, with the opportunity to have a virtual walk-through of the court. If vulnerable witnesses and victims were able to watch a walk-through to see exactly what measures could be put in place as standard to protect them, I imagine that would provide much more reassurance than saying, “This is what you are seeing, but there are also additional special measures that you can apply for.”

Introducing these measures as standard would also take away the stigma of being associated as a vulnerable witness. We talk a lot about victims. Some victims do not want to be described as victims; they want to be described as survivors. We talk about vulnerability. If we had these measures as standard, we would be acknowledging that vulnerability is expected, but that there is no stigma around it and that the courts have mitigated it, without being asked to do so.

The measures are backed by various victims groups, such as Women Against Rape, and by the Victims’ Commissioner. It would be helpful if the Minister could highlight whether the Government plan to go further and make these special measures standard.

[Sarah Sackman]

I thank the hon. Member for Chichester for the points she raised. In many respects, they are well made, and they consider people’s choice architecture—for want of a better phrase—their understanding of what they might be entitled to request, and whether we should default to providing all the special measures or maintaining, as we say we should, a tailored case-by-case assessment of the needs of the witness or the complainant. It is a tricky one.

We want to make sure that, where there is a proper basis for it, special measures can be provided to those who need them and where the judge agrees that they are needed. The hon. Member is right that in the vast majority of cases, the request for special measures or to give evidence by video link is approved— it is almost always approved—but there might be cases when, for reasons of trial fairness, that is not the case. The tailored approach is one that we regard as proportionate.

This also relates to the points made by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle about court layout and some of the physical constraints that exist within some of our Crown courts. We do not want a postcode lottery. We want consistency, which is what so much of the Bill is designed to achieve. However, we also have to acknowledge that in some of our Crown court centres, the physical constraints are real. That does not necessarily relate to screens, but it might relate to the entrance and exit. For example, there are limitations on the ideal situation of a complainant being able to avoid having to pass a defendant, which might be undesirable for all sorts of reasons. There are some courtrooms in which that simply is not possible without huge capital investment to change the physical structure.

Hon. Members have raised legitimate points and I understand the thinking behind them. We think that in the circumstances, and given that victims have a wide range of needs, a tailored approach, based on a detailed needs assessment, is the most effective approach, but we will continue to consider the situation.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Witness to be accompanied while giving evidence

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

I understand the point. In the circumstances, I would prefer to take officials’ advice and check that the legislation is doing what it intends to—providing a consistent practice of professional witness support, while maintaining trial fairness. I do not want to misdirect myself or the Committee.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My understanding of the legislation is that an independent supporter would be a recognised professional, but that does not exclude someone who may have a relationship outside their recognised profession with the person they are independently supporting. I wonder if clarification could be introduced—similar to what I think amendment 70 tried to achieve—to ensure that any relationship outside the professional role would have to be declared in front of the court. That would make it clear that, ideally, the only relationship between a witness and the independent supporter should be a professional one, and that any other one would have to be declared.

[Sarah Sackman]

I think all of that is right, but I would prefer to take the matter back to the Department and check that we have a common understanding. I do not want to do this on the hoof if I do not have the full information before me. I think that is the intention—the presumption is that it applies only to professional supporters. I suppose it is ultimately up to the court if a family member sits with the person, if that is deemed necessary in the interests of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

As the Minister points out, this clause interacts with the issue of transparency in the justice system. I recognise that the Minister thinks it attempts to strike a balance by clarifying the categories of people who may not be excluded, such as representatives of news organisations, witness supporters and approved researchers. The aim is to ensure that, while a witness may be shielded, the trial remains professional and legitimate.

However, we do not want the measure to have the unintended effect of narrowing public scrutiny, including by ordinary members of the public, who the Minister will accept are not necessarily there to intimidate or have any impact on the witness—they might not be even connected to the case. It should be assumed that people in this country can just turn up to a courthouse and watch a case, as they currently can, and as I have in the past.

Sad to say, but we have seen recently that practical transparency can be very difficult to achieve. We had the whole debacle with the Courtsdesk archive, which hugely assisted transparency in our legal system. The Opposition certainly do not feel that the Government’s initial response to that demonstrated that they were as committed to transparency in the justice system as they should be. It was only the effort of Opposition Members and media campaigners that secured a U-turn. We must ensure that these powers are used only when the interests of witnesses genuinely outweigh the public’s right to witness proceedings—although I note that the clause does not create an automatic entitlement for persons to be excluded.

We have discussed the availability of transcripts, and it would not be unreasonable to link the two issues. If people are excluded, I do not see why that could not become a trigger for making available those elements of the evidence that the public are for that reason unable to hear at first hand. I do not think the Minister is suggesting that the people in the gallery cannot hear the evidence; it is just about the impact on the witness of them being there. If that is happening and we accept that that is a break from the norm, it would be reasonable to say that transcripts of the elements that were not open to public scrutiny should be more widely available.

If the powers are enacted, it is important that the Government monitor their use going forward. They should have a clear position that they would be open to reforming or even removing the powers if they think they are not operating as intended.

We will not oppose these measures, but the Lords will want to look at them and ensure that we are excluding as little as possible. I accept the Minister’s point that, at the minute, nobody is getting excluded because of worries about how the provision operates, but that does not mean that we should just accept a new way of doing things when it could be better refined. If the Minister could clarify the point about transcript availability, it would demonstrate some good faith by ensuring that people can see for sure that we are not attempting to stop people from hearing what is going on in a courtroom.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I seek clarification from the Minister about the reference in clause 14 to

“representatives of news gathering or reporting organisations”.

Earlier, the hon. Member for Reigate raised the practice of live tweeting from court proceedings. I would appreciate it if the Minister set out her understanding of who would come under “a representative of a news gathering or reporting organisation”. With the rise of social media, and with more people getting their news online on things like X, we can have lots of news organisations with self-professed journalists or online commentators who are acting in the interests of providing online journalism, but who do not hold any form of accreditation or any official role as a journalist. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain who legitimate members of the press will be under this measure. Will they have to be recognised journalists? Will they have to have a press pass? Or can they say, “I’m here, in the interest of journalism, to live tweet the events because I am a self-employed journalist”?

[Sarah Sackman]

I am grateful for those questions and comments, because, through clause 14, we are seeking to strike a balance. At the moment, in the instance that I gave an example of, the balance is all one way. Of course we want open justice, but that is not the same, as can be the case, as having essentially a mob of people in the gallery whose mere presence is almost certainly intended to intimidate witnesses. Empowering the court to exercise discretion, while retaining the presence of at least one person connected to the defendant and protecting those representatives of newsgathering or reporting organisations, strikes the right balance.

On the question about everyone being a citizen journalist now, subsection (4)(b) refers to

“representatives of news gathering or reporting organisations”.

It refers to those who carry accreditation because they are a member of an organisation, not those who are self-appointed. I am happy to come back to the hon. Member for Chichester with clarification about that. When we talk about reporting restrictions and how they operate, they generally operate in connection with qualified journalists who are subject to the codes of conduct that go with that job. Indeed, that is something that arose with some of the issues in relation to Courtsdesk, because those who make use of that facility and that information, as opposed to the material that the public are entitled to see, are investigative journalists. I am happy to come back to the hon. Member with clarification, and if we think the legislation needs tightening up for the reasons she has outlined, then that can be looked at in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 15

Editing of video recorded cross-examination and re-examination

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 17, page 30, line 10, at end insert—

“(3) The Lord Chancellor must, within six months of the commencement of this section, lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the resources required to give full effect to the repeal of subsection 2A in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989.—

‘(1) The report under subsection (3) must include—

(a) an assessment of the level of legal aid provision necessary to ensure that parties in child arrangements proceedings are able to obtain timely and effective—

(i) advice, and

(ii) representation

particularly where allegations of domestic abuse or safeguarding concerns are raised;

(b) an evaluation of the capacity of the family courts, including—

(i) the number of judges,

(ii) court staff, and

(iii) available hearing time,

to undertake robust risk assessment and fact-finding processes in line with Practice Direction 12J;

(c) plans to address any shortfalls in judicial training, including—

(i) training relating to coercive control,

(ii) domestic abuse dynamics, and

(iii) child safeguarding.

(d) proposals for investment in the family court estate and technology to ensure—

(i) the repeal operates effectively, and

(ii) decisions are consistently grounded in the welfare and safety of the child.’”

This amendment requires the Government to set out how the family courts and legal aid system will be resourced to give full effect to the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Clause stand part.

New clause 16—Protective relocation and presumption of reasonableness—

“(1) This section applies to family proceedings in which—

(a) a parent (‘the relocating parent’) has relocated, or proposes to relocate, with a child; and

(b) it is alleged that such relocation has adversely affected, or is intended to affect, the child’s relationship with another party.

(2) Where the relocating parent demonstrates that the decision to relocate was made in consequence of domestic abuse, and this is supported by documented advice from a relevant authority or support service, there is a presumption that the relocation was reasonable and in the best interests of the child.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (2), ‘documented advice’ includes advice, guidance, or referral from—

(a) a police force;

(b) a local authority exercising social services functions;

(c) a Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC); or

(d) an Independent Domestic Violence Adviser (IDVA) or equivalent specialist support service.

(4) The presumption in subsection (2) can be rebutted if the other party demonstrates, on the balance of probabilities, that the relocation is not reasonable or not in the best interests of the child.

(5) In determining whether the presumption has been rebutted, the court must have regard to—

(a) the nature and impact of the domestic abuse;

(b) the circumstances in which the advice or referral was given; and

(c) the welfare of the child as the court’s paramount consideration.

(6) The court may disapply the presumption in subsection (2) where it is satisfied that—

(a) the evidential basis for the documented advice is insufficient; or

(b) it is otherwise necessary to do so in order to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child.

(7) In this section—

(a) ‘domestic abuse’ has the same meaning as in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021;

(b) ‘child’ means a person under the age of 18;

(c) ‘family proceedings’ has the same meaning as in section 75(3) of the Courts Act 2003.”

This new clause introduces a rebuttable presumption that a parent’s relocation with a child, undertaken in reliance on documented advice from authorities or support services in the context of domestic abuse, is reasonable and in the child’s best interests, unless the contrary is shown.

New clause 20—Determination of domestic abuse allegations and related presumptions—

“This section applies in family proceedings in which—

(a) party A alleges that party B has perpetrated domestic abuse, and

(b) the court is invited to consider whether a party A has engaged in conduct intended, or having the effect of, undermining a child’s relationship with another party.

(1) Where this section applies, the court must determine, as a preliminary issue, any allegation of domestic abuse before considering any allegation falling within subsection (1)(b).

(2) The court must treat the determination of allegations of domestic abuse as a matter of priority and, so much as reasonably practicable, must not proceed to determine any issue relating to the child’s relationship with either party until such allegations have been determined.

(3) Where the court finds, on the balance of probabilities, that party B has perpetrated domestic abuse against another party or the child—

(a) there shall be a rebuttable presumption that any reluctance or refusal by the child to spend time with party B constitutes a reasonable and justified response to the domestic abuse; and

(b) the court must not consider any allegation that party A has engaged in conduct falling within subsection (1)(b) unless satisfied that the presumption in paragraph (a) has been rebutted.

(4) For the purposes of subsection (4)(b), the presumption may be rebutted only where party B demonstrates, on the balance of probabilities, that the child’s reluctance or refusal cannot be reasonably attributed to the domestic abuse.

(5) Subsections (2) to (5) apply only where the allegation of domestic abuse meets such minimum evidential threshold as may be prescribed by rules of court.

(6) Notwithstanding the above, the court may disapply the presumption in subsection (4)(a), or the requirement in subsection (2), where it is satisfied that to do so is necessary to secure the welfare of the child as its paramount consideration.

(7) In this section—

(a) ‘domestic abuse’ has the same meaning as in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021;

(b) references to a child are to a person under the age of 18;

(c) references to ‘family proceedings’ have the same meaning as in section 75(3) of the Courts Act 2003.”

This new clause requires courts to determine domestic abuse allegations before considering claims of parental alienation. If abuse is proven, a child’s reluctance to see the abusive parent is presumed a justified response. This presumption must be rebutted before the court can entertain allegations of alienating behaviour against the protective parent.

New clause 31—Determination of domestic abuse allegations and related presumptions—

“(1) There is a rebuttable presumption that any reluctance or refusal by a child to spend time with a party against whom the child, or a party representing the child, has made allegations of domestic abuse constitutes a reasonable and justified response to the domestic abuse.

(2) The presumption in subsection (1) may be rebutted only where the accused party demonstrates, on the balance of probabilities, that the child’s reluctance or refusal cannot be reasonably attributed to the domestic abuse.”

This new clause provides that, in family court, where a child refuses or is reluctant to spend time with one party as a result of an allegation against that party of domestic abuse against the child, the court must presume the reluctance or refusal is reasonable.

I remind hon. Members that any Divisions on new clauses will come later.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Amendment 14 would require the Government to set out how the family courts and legal aid system will be resourced to give full effect to the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement. It would necessitate a report being laid by the Government on the impact of repealing the presumption of parental responsibility. We are in favour of clause 17, but the amendment focuses on the impact of the provisions on legal aid and the capacity of family courts, judicial training and investment in the family court estate. Repealing the presumption of parental responsibility will lead to a need for more legal advice, as well as changes in hearings and court practices. It is important that the Government report on those changes to the House. We hope that they accept the need for a report.

Clause 17 will repeal the presumption of parental involvement in the Children Act 1989. The presumption was originally introduced to ensure that both parents could maintain a relationship with their children after separation. However, there have been long-standing campaigns to repeal the presumption, with evidence emerging—I say emerging, but it is long-standing evidence—that children could be left at risk of harm. The change will mean that the courts will no longer start from the assumption that parental involvement is always in the child’s best interests.

A key campaigner for this change, working with Women’s Aid, is Claire Throssell, who the Committee had the opportunity to hear from during the evidence session. Claire’s children, Jack and Paul, were killed by their father, who locked them in the attic and set fire to the house. If there was any moment that we all will remember for a very long time, it was Claire holding the images of her children before the incident and afterwards. I commend her for her bravery and for the way that she was able to speak so clearly not just for herself, but for all the families who have experienced devastating bereavement in that way—fighting for the children who will come after.

A family court judge, guided by the presumption, decided to allow Claire’s ex-husband unsupervised access to their children, despite evidence that he had threatened to harm both her and them. Since Women’s Aid first reported on the issue in 2004, 67 children have been killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse through contact arrangements, with 19 further child deaths documented in the decade to September 2024 alone.

The Lib Dems are in favour of the shift in law away from the presumption of parental involvement. Although the Bill seeks to repeal the presumption, there is a pro-contact culture in the family courts, as described by Farah Nazeer of Women’s Aid, who we also heard from in the evidence session. Will the Minister lay out what will be done to support the cultural reform of the family courts to ensure that this is a pivotal moment for victims of domestic abuse, who for so long have had their concerns around their children’s safety dismissed?

Claire spoke to that point in the evidence session. When I asked her what she believed the next steps should be, she said:

“What I would like to see moving forward is an understanding of what it looks like without presumption of contact; what good practice looks like; understanding trauma; understanding what coercive control is; understanding emotional abuse. We all understand physical abuse—it is there; we see it. What we do not understand is the emotional abuse and the scars that we carry. We must always look from the position of actually seeing a child, hearing a child, believing a child, protecting a child, and we must go from this basis.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 58, Q110.]

New clause 16, which I also tabled, is a probing amendment that I will not press to a vote, but I wish to discuss it further. It would introduce a rebuttal presumption that a parent’s relocation with a child in the context of domestic abuse, undertaken in reliance on and with documented advice from authorities or support services, is reasonable and in the child’s best interests, unless the contrary is known.

New clause 16 would allow a parent to relocate with a child if they have evidence or advice from a domestic abuse support service or authority. It would require the court to assume that the move is reasonable and place the burden on the other parent to prove that the move is not in the child’s best interest.

The new clause is aimed at making it easier for victims of domestic abuse to leave their situations safely, and to prevent them from being forced to remain near their abusive ex-partners. Currently, the legal framework does not adequately distinguish between a parent who removes a child to protect them and a parent who removes a child to punish the other party. Our new clause would not remove safeguards in respect of alienation, but would instead shift the dial towards believing and protecting victims of domestic abuse.

The new clause is supported by Fair Hearing, which shared multiple examples of its work with courts that failed to give proper weight to the relevance of domestic abuse in relocation decisions. In one such case, a mother who had experienced severe physical, sexual and psychological abuse had been forced by her partner, during the relationship, to move with their children to an isolated rural area. After leaving him, she sought permission to return to her home town, where she had family support and greater safety. The court none the less required her to remain in an isolated cottage near her abuser, failing to give proper weight to the impact of the abuse, or to her need for safety and support. Cases of that kind illustrate the consequences of a framework that, in its operation, too often treats a survivor seeking to relocate for safety no differently from any other parent seeking to move for lifestyle or preference reasons.

I make the point to the Minister that this could happen to any of us. So often, abuse does not start on day one, when the partner suggests that we move somewhere lovely and will be really happy there. I am a very long way removed from the version of myself who made the decision to follow a boy three hours away from my family in my early 20s. He turned out not to be the great guy I thought he was when I made that decision. I escaped from that situation, but had I stayed and ended up having children, the idea that I would have been trapped in a city that was not mine, away from my family, who were my support network, is too scary to bear. I remind the Minister that it could happen to literally any one of us.

Wider campaigns from Women’s Aid, SafeLives and Refuge have focused on ensuring that survivors can relocate to escape abuse. As subsection 2 of the new clause outlines:

“Where the relocating parent demonstrates that the decision to relocate was made in consequence of domestic abuse, and this is supported by documented advice from a relevant authority or support service, there is a presumption that the relocation was reasonable and in the best interests of the child.”

Under the new clause, the documented advice would include evidence from a police force, social services, a multi-agency risk assessment conference or an independent domestic violence adviser. We look to work closely with the Government on this issue, and I hope they recognise the need to go further, but I will not push new clause 16 to a vote.

I will speak briefly to new clause 20, also tabled in my name, which would introduce a statutory presumption that where domestic abuse is alleged, the court must make findings on the allegations before considering any claim that a parent has sought to undermine the child’s relationship with the other party. If one parent alleges domestic abuse and the other alleges alienating behaviour—that is, influencing the child against them—the court must decide the domestic abuse allegations first. The court cannot move on to contact issues until that is decided. If the court finds domestic abuse, a child’s reluctance to see that parent is presumed to be justified. That presumption can be overturned only with evidence. If abuse is proven, courts cannot consider claims of alienation until the alleged abusive parent proves the child’s resistance is not due to abuse.

Campaigners have long argued that the family courts have been used by abusers to retraumatise victims and have over-prioritised contact between parents and children. It is estimated that around 60% to 90% of child arrangement cases in the family court feature allegations of domestic abuse. In 2020, the report entitled “Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases” highlighted serious issues with how the family court system addresses domestic abuse in child arrangement cases. It said that those issues were underpinned by a pro-contact culture, silo working, an adversarial system and resource constraints.

A 2023 report by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner stated:

“Victims and survivors and their advisors reported concerns that raising domestic abuse as an issue often risked the retaliatory use of so-called ‘parental’ alienation narratives by parties against whom domestic abuse had been alleged as a counter-claim, leading to worse outcomes for adult and child victims and survivors.”

Five years on from the harm report, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner found that despite overwhelming evidence of domestic abuse in most cases, a pro-contact culture and a failure to recognise abuse still contribute to decisions that may put children in harm’s way.

This can be considered a probing amendment; I will not press new clause 20 to a vote. We will be looking to work closely with the Government to make progress in this area. The new clause would tilt the dial slightly towards victims of domestic abuse by ensuring that courts properly examined cases before considering issues of alienation. It would prioritise the safety of victims of domestic abuse, whether partners or children, by requiring these allegations to be addressed first.

It is also sometimes argued that children resist contact with certain parents because of manipulation. Our proposal would ensure that courts did not assume that manipulation first, but it would also have safeguards. It would not allow domestic abuse organisations to submit evidence; instead, it would be the authorities, social services and an independent domestic violence adviser who would do that. A minimum evidential threshold would also have to be met.

[Dr Mullan]

I want to begin by acknowledging the gravity of what we heard in evidence in Committee. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester, pointed to, the evidence from Claire in relation to her children will stay with all of us. It was so moving and so upsetting for anyone thinking about how they would feel in that scenario. There was also the testimony of other parents who have lost children, and survivors of domestic abuse, who felt let down by a system that prioritised contact over their safety. That testimony matters. The Committee has a duty to take it incredibly seriously and give it the maximum possible weight.

We also have a duty to legislate carefully, however, and when it comes to legislating I do not think there are many areas of human frailty and human complexity that are more complicated than this. As anyone with any experience of the family court—and of life generally and the interactions between families who split up—will agree, all these things are incredibly complicated. When we seek to be prescriptive about how exactly a court should or should not seek to do things, that is fraught with risk and potential unintended consequences, just as today we are discussing the unintended consequences of a measure that may have been brought in for good reasons.

We must think very carefully, therefore, when it comes to the repeal of section 1(2A) of the Children Act 1989, and particularly about whether we think that will achieve what it promises. I make no apologies for saying that I want to consider this in some detail and that we will want to follow the discussions on it in some detail as the Bill progresses. Although we are not seeking to oppose the repeal at this stage, it is certainly not something—as opposed to some other measures—that is without the need for further scrutiny.

I want to say plainly that the courts, social services and CAFCASS have made serious mistakes in the past—importantly, both before that provision was inserted in 2014 and since—and those serious mistakes have cost children their lives. However, the question before us today is whether repealing the presumption will fix the mistakes or whether it might distract from the need for much deeper reforms and more complex and difficult work than can be achieved by a simple measure in a Bill.

Let me deal with the most important point: the presumption introduced in 2014 does not give any parent an automatic right to contact. It is important that we recognise that. It does not override the paramount principle in the law. I think we probably all remember the evidence given by one of the barristers in Committee, who was clear that while they thought the presumption could be repealed, the law as it stands does not allow the desire for a parent to have contact to override the welfare of a child. It also does not override the welfare checklist, or require courts to make an order that places children at risk.

The presumption establishes a starting point that, where it is safe to do so, children should generally benefit from the involvement of both parents. That starting point can be rebutted, but it expressly does not apply where a parent’s involvement would put the child at risk. In its written evidence, Both Parents Matter describe it as a “statutory benchmark”, not a straitjacket.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Paul]

No, I’m okay.

I would gently say to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire that I hope she has heard—and even seen—enough from me to know that I am here to protect children. Of course I am horrified by any loss of a child, but my point is that I am trying to step back, be objective and say, “What is the reason that those children lost their lives?”. I am not convinced that it was the parental presumption—I am not saying that I am right on that; I am just open-minded to it.

I have seen a particular case quite closely—I should declare that I am a serving county councillor in Surrey—and that is the case of Sara Sharif. I have gone through the safeguarding reviews in a huge amount of detail; it affected all of us councillors in Surrey greatly. It was an absolutely awful case. So many things went wrong throughout her life. From the family courts to social services, her GP and the school, there was just a barrage of failure that led to that poor little girl being murdered, and that absolutely could have been prevented.

People might argue, “Well, if we had removed the parental presumption, that would have saved her.” Having gone through all that, I can tell the hon. Member that, in that case, it would not have done anything. It was safeguarding failures. People just made mistakes. They got things wrong. They were too worried about offending people to take the right actions.

What I am saying today is just that it is really important, when we look at these things, that we diagnose what went wrong. We have to do that quite objectively. That is difficult when we are hearing from lots of different people who have gone through awful things, but our job is to try to not be emotional—I say that having got emotional myself—and to look at it logically. At the end of the day, we all just want to deliver the outcome that protects children. That is what all of us on this Committee want to do. But it is important that we can talk about that without the hon. Member suggesting that I somehow do not care about children, because what I am trying to do is to have that objectivity, because it matters to me so much that we do protect those children that I want us to have that proper debate and to say, “Is this really the right way or are there other things we can be doing? Do we need to do multiple things? Maybe this isn’t enough.” I am not saying that we should not do it; I am saying that we just need to make sure that we have thought this through.

I will be really keen to hear from the Minister; I know this really matters to her as well, and she will have done that thinking, so I look forward to hearing her thoughts on the challenges I have brought up today. But, as I say, I keep an open mind, and we all share the same objectives.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Am I right in thinking that the hon. Member agrees with me that, when we are trying to legislate for what the most complex part of our justice system—families—that is an incredibly hard job? We all know from personal experience that the one thing that binds us all is that we have a family; we might disagree on whether they are good ones or bad ones, and whether we get on with them or not, but we all came from somewhere, and they are complicated things.

Across the House, we all share the desire to ensure that we recognise the complexity of family relationships and protect those most vulnerable in our society by making sure that people do not have the right to still have contact with their children when they have done things that mean that they absolutely should not. However, we also recognise that systems are abused, and we see that in all directions; people will always find ways of getting around systems, or of using the criminal justice system to retraumatise or to hold on to some form of control. Does the hon. Member therefore agree with me that, while what we are trying to do here is really complex, we are all doing it for the right reasons?

[Rebecca Paul]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. I appreciate the fact that she has tabled these amendments and that she recognises that it is not easy to strike this balance, particularly when we are trying to address abuse and alienation cases and it is sometimes hard to know what situation we are dealing with.

We are trying to come up with a system that protects as many people as we possibly can, but I think we also have to acknowledge that it will never be perfect. If anyone thinks that we can change one bit of law and then all of a sudden nothing horrible will ever happen again, I am afraid to say that these awful things will always happen, and things will always go wrong. It is about trying our best to have a framework that gets the balance right.

I will stop there—I have probably made my point. This has been a really good debate, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about some of the points I have raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I recognise that the amendment is limited in scope because the Bill is limited in scope, especially when it comes to the family court. Perhaps rather cheekily, I was trying to get a report on the general health of the family court system because so many organisations tell Members across the House that they are really concerned about a lot of the systems sitting in the family court, not just the parental responsibility piece. I remain hopeful that we will see family court legislation introduced, as the Minister will be aware that I have requested in multiple oral questions in the Chamber.

I am aware that the report required by the amendment would be specifically about the repeal, but we need a health check of our family court system because a lot of people are sounding the alarm about the concerns they have with that system.

[Sarah Sackman]

The family justice strategy, which will be forthcoming in July, will address a lot of what the hon. Member asks for. It will set out where the Government think reform is needed, and it will bring together what we are already doing with our child-focused courts programme, which is accompanied by a £17 million investment. We believe in that model, which we think has huge merit. It will be available to people regardless of where in the country they live.

More generally, we are introducing the funding that the Lord Chancellor has allocated to sitting days for family hearings, the targeted recruitment of more judges, more fee-paid judges, the greater use of virtual hearings—which can be a supportive measure for people giving evidence, not just an efficiency measure—and training.

The hon. Member for Chichester will know that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner has also undertaken detailed work in this area through her “Everyday business” report, which talks to some of the resourcing constraints faced by the family court. That work forms part of the commissioner’s report on a family court reporting mechanism, which is designed to provide ongoing evidence-based scrutiny of the family court’s response to domestic abuse in particular, and to highlight where systemic improvements are needed, so we have other accountability measures shining that light. If the hon. Member for Chichester awaits the strategy—she will no doubt want to take a look and critique parts of it—I think a lot of it will address some of the concerns she raises.

As I said, before proposing the repeal of the presumption, we carefully assessed the impact it would have. We do not overstate it, but it is important because the change affects the judicial process, not the underlying reasons why families come to court. Because we do not expect it to increase case volumes, case length or demand for legal aid, we think that the current arrangements can meet it, but there are so many other improvements that we want to drive.

--- Later in debate ---

We always say that the loss of one life is one too many. If any of these changes saves one life, they will have been worth making. With that in mind, I commend clause 17 to the Committee.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

This has been a robust and important debate, and there are strong feelings on both sides of the argument. As I said earlier, we are legislating in a complex area. I think the shared opinion is that the intention is correct. Some of the questions that have been asked are legitimate, but I know the Minister is keen to work collaboratively. I will not press my two new clauses to a vote—they are probing amendments to open up the conversation—but amendment 14, which would require a report as a health check for the family courts, is important, so I will press it to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

By establishing specialist rape courts, we can address the delays where they are most apparent, we can focus on the experience of victims by improving the efficiency of the pre-court process and, most importantly, we can reform our justice system while remaining faithful to its most fundamental principles. Let us deliver the swifter justice that we promised, but let us do so with the consent and involvement of the public through the continued use of our valued jury system.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I rise to speak to my new clause 6, which would introduce specialist courts for sexual offences and domestic abuse cases. It is similar to new clause 2, tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Warrington North, and Conservative new clause 25, tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle.

We tabled new clause 6, which would ensure that specialist court capacity is made available for the fast-tracking of rape and serious sexual offence cases, because that was a Labour manifesto commitment. The Government have announced blitz courts, which will list similar cases together. They will be introduced to begin with in London and the south-east, where the backlog of cases is most severe, and will at first prioritise cases involving assaults on emergency workers. Our new clause would ensure that court space and time is set aside for RASSO cases.

The Government promised in their manifesto to implement specific rape-focused courts, but have chosen not to deliver that commitment. As of September last year, 16% of cases in the backlog were sexual offence cases. We all listened to the harrowing oral evidence from victims and survivors of rape who waited years for their cases to be heard. I pay tribute to them and to the hon. Member for Warrington North for their bravery in doing something incredibly challenging: reliving the most fragile moments of their lives. They did so incredibly well. We owe it to them to fix the system. I recognise that the Government are trying to do that, but they are choosing to do it in a different way from the way a lot of survivors are asking for it to be done.

Specialist rape courts have not been properly trialled. What have been trialled are courts with specific trauma-informed training. Fast-tracking rape cases will alleviate the wait that many face. If courts are trauma-informed, that might limit retraumatising experiences for victims at the point that they enter the process. In her written evidence, the Victims’ Commissioner said:

“Victims of rape are particularly impacted by the backlogs and by the criminal justice system more broadly. The duration between the case being received and completed at Crown Court is particularly high for rape offences, an average of 429 days compared to an average of 259 days for all offences… Specialist rape courts which expedite rape cases and ensure a trauma-informed approach via training and adaptions to the court environment could help lessen the impact of the system on victims.”

The Victims’ Commissioner has been calling for specialist rape courts since 2022 and was really pleased that the Government committed in their manifesto to introduce them. I think that comes from her experience working alongside a very limited pilot that created a trauma-informed court in a particular Crown court. I am sure she will be keen to see the Government make good on the commitment that they stood on just two years ago.

New clause 23, which is also tabled in my name, would require the Lord Chancellor to commission a report on the effect of the provisions of the Bill on the progression of rape and serious sexual offence cases, and to respond to the recommendations in the report. It is completely unacceptable that these cases are waiting for so long. We need to understand whether the Government’s measures make a material impact on those cases and reduce the time that people have to wait in the criminal justice system. The new clause is also supported by the Victims’ Commissioner, so that we can see real progress for victims who are stuck in the criminal justice system.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Huge apologies for my lateness, Sir John. I wish to speak in support of new clause 2 and lend my support to new clauses 6, 23 and 25, all of which seek to honour the commitment that the Government made in their manifesto at the last election. I have huge admiration for the hon. Member for Warrington North, both for her courageous and clear speech on Second Reading and for tabling new clause 2, which seeks to honour that commitment. I am heartened by how many Labour Members have added their names to the new clause, and I hope that the Government will listen.

New clause 2, which is detailed, would introduce specialist courts. It sets out the different ways in which guidance can deal with the difficulties that courts currently have in dealing with issues such as coercive control and honour-based abuse, and would make sure that the courts deliver justice in a timely and compassionate way. It is so important that we look at the many practical ways of dealing with the cases that we need to hear, for victims of domestic violence and sexual offences, that do not completely remove the right to select a jury trial, as the Minister has admitted the Bill will do, and that do not adjust the thresholds in courts so as to effectively abolish the centuries-old principle of jury equity. That principle is important to our democratic right to protest and to protect our fellow citizens from unjust prosecution, including by authoritarian or tyrannical future Governments.

The new clauses in this group outline how much can be done to make court processes support victims in a practical, kinder and more compassionate way. They would make the processes more trauma-informed, and more effective and just, as they would bring more successful prosecutions in cases of sexual and domestic violence. I also support new clauses 8 to 10, which would mandate training in such matters and which we will discuss later.

A goal of the Government’s reforms is to increase speed, and the new clauses would achieve that by focusing specialist courts on these important cases. We have debated extensively the many other practical measures that could speed up justice more generally and clear the backlog, which is getting in the way of far too many of these cases.

I really hope that the Government are listening and that we can vote on these issues today. I hope they will go away and listen more to the victims groups that are determined to put forward practical measures to deal with these things without affecting our fundamental rights, and introduce clauses that will do that—and remove clauses 1 to 7—on Report. That is the right thing to do. The issues have been laid out clearly during the Committee’s debates, and the Government now have an important choice to make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The Minister talks about the practice of floating trials or over-listing, which we know is so harrowing for victims, who get themselves ready for a case only for it to not go ahead. Quite often they are not told that they have a floating case or that their case has been listed; they are just told that their case has been adjourned and that they will be provided with a new date.

If we look at the data for the number of cases that fell at the last hurdle in 2024, we see that there were 444 where the prosecution advocate failed to attend; 314 where the defence advocate failed to attend; 209 where the prosecution advocate engaged in another trial; and 186 linked to prison transport delays, although I would argue that that number is much higher because of the way they are recorded. How does the Minister square the circle of trying to speed up the process while asking the judiciary not to over-list, which could cause the number of courts that are sitting empty each day to go up, because when a case falls that Crown court will then be empty?

[Sarah Sackman]

The hon. Lady asks a really good question. The point about ineffective trials is one of the greatest sources of both delay and waste in the system. She is right that last year over 1,000 trials were ineffective on the date of trial. That means that everyone had turned up except for one element, and the hon. Lady cited a number of the missing elements. That is why I do not take issue with the data presented by the Institute for Government, but I do take issue with its remedy. As the IFG itself points out, one of the greatest drivers of those ineffective trials is workforce pressures—the fact that we do not have enough prosecutors and defence barristers.

We are constantly being hit with the criticism that there are courtrooms lying empty. That slightly misrepresents the problem—sometimes we need that spare capacity in a court—but it is not entirely untrue. Part of that is about not just sitting days but system capacity and workforce. Building that workforce back up will take time. That is why the Government’s investment in criminal legal aid and match funding for pupillages is crucial, as is the record settlement that the CPS received. Building up the workforce to meet the demand and reduce the number of ineffective trials is so important.

The hon. Member for Chichester made an important point about the interaction between the measures we are discussing, the desirability of reducing the number of floating trials because of the impact of late adjournments, and the need for some agility and flexibility, which is why listing is a judicial function in individual Crown courts. Some parties might be ready to go, and they will want to get the trial on sooner, so we want to allow for some flexibility to enable that. It is not about watering down all the special measures that might be needed to support best evidence, but about where it is desirable to have some agility.

In that vein, the Government’s piloting of an AI, data-driven listing tool, which has been tested in Preston and Isleworth and is showing early positive results, will be crucial. I have seen the tool, and it allows us, based on certain factors in a case, to get a pretty rich understanding of how long it is likely to last. It works in much the same way as an NHS appointment: if somebody cancels because they are not well enough to go ahead with a surgery, but everybody else is ready—including the team, the doctors and the hip surgeon—can they pull in someone else on the waiting list? The tool will allow us to do the same kind of thing, building on some of the know-how from NHS appointment systems. We want to retain some agility while, at the same time, having a consistent approach to prioritising cases.

We want to see rape cases prioritised in the national listing model, because of the vulnerability of the witnesses involved and how pernicious delays can be, and we want to drive out floating trials, but there has to be some flexibility in the system. One thing we must guard against—this is why we have to think really carefully about when legislation is needed and when it is not—is creating a situation where the intent might be absolutely right, but we inadvertently create inflexibility by legislating.

In this case, we should not legislate in this way out of respect for the separation of powers and the constitutional dividing line between the executive and the judiciary, but there are other reasons why we might not want to legislate—for example, if it would lead to inflexibility and counterproductive results that go against the interests of some complainants in rape trials. That was a slightly long-winded answer, but I hope it gives the Committee a sense of how much is going on in the justice firmament that is not legislative but represents real progress for citizens in this country who have the misfortune of encountering the criminal justice system.

New clause 23 would require the Lord Chancellor to undertake a review of how the reforms impact the way RASSO cases are handled. It is not right for victims to continue to pay for the crisis in our courts, particularly in respect of delays. We know that victims of rape are facing, on average, a wait of over 400 days for trial, and we know that a large proportion of the outstanding caseload—around 20%—is made up of sexual offences. We need to drive down that backlog, why is why I have said that reform measures are needed. There is no doubt that, if these reforms receive Royal Assent, the Ministry of Justice, the Justice Committee and others will look to measure the impact they are having. I urge the hon. Member for Chichester not to press new clause 23 to a vote.

In a similar vein, new clause 25 seeks to introduce specialist courts, which I have already spoken about. I hope I could not have been clearer that the Government remain committed to this enterprise and to our manifesto commitment. However, the introduction of such courts does not require primary legislation. In essence, we are getting on with it, regardless.

One thing I have already mentioned is providing trauma-informed training to all court staff, which will be available from this spring. Again, there is change happening right now in our courts, irrespective of what happens with the Bill. That is happening as we speak, and it will be a real step change. It is something for which victims groups have been calling for a very long term, and which I hope and believe will improve the experience of going to court for victims of sexual offences.

I sincerely thank all Members who have tabled new clauses in this space. It is important—and, frankly, a welcome opportunity—for me, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), and others to talk about how we are galvanising these different initiatives within our criminal justice system. We want to deliver the specialist courts that we promised, to drive forward progress and to encourage our judiciary to be front-footed and progressive in its listing practices, but this is not mutually exclusive with the reforms in the Bill designed to drive down the backlog; it is a question of both/and, not either/or. I thank hon. Members for raising these important issues, but I urge them not to press their new clauses to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 4—Review of the Feasibility of Two Court Sittings per day—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must, within 12 months beginning on the day on which this Act comes into force, lay before Parliament an independent report into the feasibility of conducting two trials per day in designated court rooms (‘the Scheme’).

(2) The scheme would allow for proceedings in a Crown Court to consist of—

(a) a morning session, commencing at 09:00 and concluding at 13:00; and

(b) an afternoon session, commencing at 14:00 and concluding at 18:00.

(3) A report under subsection (1) must assess the impact of the scheme—

(a) on the efficiency and timeliness of court proceedings;

(b) on the availability of judges, legal practitioners, and court staff;

(c) the potential impact on defendants, victims, and witnesses; and

(d) the cost and resource implications of the scheme.

(4) The Lord Chancellor must, within three months of the laying of the report under subsection (1), publish a response.

(5) The response must include proposals for a pilot scheme based on the findings of the report including the proposed scope and duration of any such pilot.”

This new clause requires the Lord Chancellor to commission and lay before Parliament an independent report on the feasibility of introducing two court sittings per day in designated courtrooms, including an assessment of its impact on efficiency, resources, and court users, and to set out the Government’s intended next steps.

New clause 5—Targets for Backlog Reduction—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must, within six months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed, set and publish annual targets for the reduction of the Crown Court backlog in England and Wales.

(2) There must be a target for the—

(a) overall reduction of the Crown Court backlog in England and Wales, and

(b) reduction of the backlog in each different HMCTS region.

(3) The Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament an annual report on progress against these targets.

(4) Any report under subsection (3) must include any steps taken to address the failure to meet the targets.”

This new clause requires the Lord Chancellor to set and publish targets for reducing court backlogs and to report annually to Parliament on progress.

New clause 13—Report on the effect of the Act on public trust and participation in the criminal justice system—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must commission a report on the effect of the provisions of the Act on public trust and participation in the judicial system.

(2) A report under this section must—

(a) include consideration of the effect of the provisions of the Act on—

(i) witness participation;

(ii) the effect of these reforms on public confidence and trust in the criminal justice system;

(iii) the effect of these provisions on BAME engagement with and trust of the criminal justice system;

(b) contain recommendations for further provision, or changes to delivery of provision under this Act, to increase the levels of each criterion set out in subparagraphs (2)(a)(i) to (2)(a)(iii).

(3) Within twelve months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed, the Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament—

(a) a copy of a report under this section,

(b) the Lord Chancellor’s response to recommendations made by that report.”

This new clause would require the Lord Chancellor to commission, lay, and respond to a report on the effect of the Bill on public trust in the criminal justice system.

New clause 17—Review of Efficiencies in the Criminal Justice System—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must, within 24 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, conduct a review on the impact of the provisions of this Act on the efficiency of the criminal justice system.

(2) The review under subsection (1) must, in particular, consider the impact on the efficiency of the criminal justice system of—

(a) the provisions of this Act;

(b) The wider criminal justice system;

(c) the standard of delivery by court contract providers, including PECS contractors;

(d) the condition of the courts estate; and

(e) the use of technology.

(3) In considering ‘efficiency’, the review must consider the impact on—

(a) delays,

(b) backlogs, and

(c) the experience of victims and witnesses.

(4) The Secretary of State must lay a report on the review before Parliament.

(5) The report under subsection (4) must include recommendations for further legislative or administrative changes to improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system.”

This new clause requires the Secretary of State to review and report on whether the Act has improved the efficiency of the criminal justice system, including impacts on delays, backlogs, and the experience of victims and witnesses.

New clause 22—Remote Court Participation: Strategy—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a strategy for the use of remote proceedings to reduce the case backlog (‘the strategy’).

(2) The strategy must include—

(a) an assessment of the current use of remote proceedings;

(b) an evaluation of the impact of remote proceedings on the speed of case disposal and the overall reduction of the outstanding caseload;

(c) recommendations on how the principle of open justice can be upheld with the increased use of remote proceedings;

(d) criteria for determining the suitability of proceedings for different forms of remote participation; and

(e) provisions for the security, reliability, and resilience of digital systems used in remote proceedings.

(3) The Secretary of State must, at intervals of no more than 24 months following the laying of the strategy, lay before Parliament a report on progress made against the strategy.

(4) The progress report must consider—

(a) the extent to which the strategy has been implemented;

(b) the impact on the criminal case backlog, including any measures by which that impact has been assessed; and

(c) any further legislative or budgetary provisions to ensure the effectiveness of remote proceedings.

(5) For the purposes of this section, ‘remote proceedings’ means any proceedings in which one or more participants attend by way of live video or audio link.”

This new clause requires the Lord Chancellor to publish a formal strategy for the use of remote proceedings to reduce the case backload in the criminal justice system.

New clause 32—Commencement dependent on independent review of racial disproportionality—

“(1) This section applies in relation to the commencement of Clauses 1 to 7 of this Act.

(2) The provisions inserted by Clauses 1 to 7 of this Act may not be brought into force unless the conditions in subsections (3) to (6) have been met.

(3) The Secretary of State must commission an independent review into racial disproportionality arising from—

(a) the changes to jurisdiction powers and procedures in the Magistrates’ Courts under Part 1; and

(b) the operation of trial-allocation decisions under Part 1.

(4) As soon as reasonably practicable after completing a review under this section, the reviewer must send a report on its outcome to the Secretary of State.

(5) On receiving a report under subsection (4), the Secretary of State must lay a copy of it before both Houses of Parliament.

(6) As soon as reasonably practicable, the Secretary of State must—

(a) prepare and publish a strategy setting out the measures the Secretary of State intends to take in consequence of the review’s findings; and

(b) implement those measures in full before Clauses 1 to 7 may be brought into force.”

This new clause introduces a duty to commission an independent review into racial disproportionality arising from the changes to jurisdiction, powers and procedures in the magistrates’ courts, and from the operation of the new trial-allocation provisions in Clauses 1 to 7 of the Bill.

New clause 33—Commencement dependent on review of differential impact on classes of persons—

“(1) This section applies in relation to the commencement of Clauses 1 to 7 of this Act.

(2) The provisions inserted by Clauses 1 to 7 of this Act may not be brought into force unless the conditions in subsections (3) to (7) have been met.

(3) The Secretary of State must commission an independent review on whether, and the extent to which—

(a) the changes to jurisdiction powers and procedures in the Magistrates’ Courts under Part 1; and

(b) the operation of trial-allocation decisions under Part 1,

are likely to have a disproportionate impact on particular classes of persons.

(4) The review under subsection (3) must consider—

(a) the extent to which, as a result of the provisions in subsections (3)(a) and (b), defendants in criminal proceedings are eligible for legal aid;

(b) whether persons of limited financial means are likely to be affected differently from other defendants as a result of those provisions; and

(c) the projected number of defendants who, as a result of those provisions, are likely to be unrepresented.

(5) As soon as reasonably practicable after completing a review under this section, the reviewer must send a report on its findings to the Secretary of State.

(6) On receiving a report under subsection (5), the Secretary of State must lay a copy of it before both Houses of Parliament.

(7) As soon as reasonably practicable, the Secretary of State must—

(a) publish a strategy setting out the measures the Secretary of State intends to take in consequence of the review’s findings; and

(b) implement those measures in full before Clauses 1 to 7 may be brought into force.”

This new clause introduces a duty to conduct an independent review of whether Clause 1 to 7 of the Bill give rise to disproportionate impacts on particular classes of persons.

Amendment 15, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“, subject to the provisions of subsection (3A).

(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make regulations under subsection (3) relating to the following sections until he has published a response to the recommendation of Part II of Independent Review of the Criminal Courts—

(a) Section 1 (Removal of right to elect trial on indictment);

(b) Section 2 (Written indication of guilty plea: removal of right to object to venue);

(c) Section 3 (Trial on indictment without a jury: general rule for allocation);

(d) Section 4 (Trial on indictment without a jury: complex or lengthy cases);

(e) Section 5 (Consequential amendments relating to sections 3 and 4).

(f) Section 6 (Increase in maximum custodial sentence in magistrates’ courts)

(g) Section 7 (Appeals from magistrates’ courts)”.

This amendment would make the publication of the Government response to Part II of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts a precondition of Clause 1 to 7 of this Bill coming into force.

Amendment 59, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“, subject to the provisions of subsection (3A).

(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make regulations under subsection (3) relating to the sections set out under subsection (3B) until he has taken reasonable steps to increase Crown Court sitting capacity, including but not limited to—

(a) using buildings not currently in use as courts to hear cases where cells are not needed, and

(b) reducing lost sitting days as a result of late guilty pleas and prison transport delays.

(3B) The sections referenced in subsection (3A) are—

(a) Section 1 (Removal of right to elect trial on indictment);

(b) Section 2 (Written indication of guilty plea: removal of right to object to venue);

(c) Section 3 (Trial on indictment without a jury: general rule for allocation);

(d) Section 4 (Trial on indictment without a jury: complex or lengthy cases);

(e) Section 5 (Consequential amendments relating to sections 3 and 4).

(f) Section 6 (Increase in maximum custodial sentence in magistrates’ courts)

(g) Section 6 (Increase in maximum custodial sentence in magistrates’ courts)”.

This amendment would ensure that sections 1 to 7 of the Act could not be commenced until the Lord Chancellor has used alternative means to increase Crown Court sitting capacity.

Amendment 35, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) bringing sections 1 to 7 into force until the conditions in subsection (3B) are met.

(3B) The conditions are that—

(a) the Lord Chancellor has provided funding for at least 130,000 sitting days in the Crown Court in the financial year following the coming into force of this Act,

(b) HM Courts and Tribunals Service has made an assessment that the Crown Court has, so far as possible, used the allocation of sitting days provided under subsection (3B)(a), and

(c) the Lord Chancellor has made a statement to the House of Commons that the funding provided under subsection (3B)(a) has not reduced the number of cases pending trial in the Crown Court compared to the start of the financial year.”

This amendment prevents the provisions in sections 1 to 7 from coming into force until the Lord Chancellor has provided funding for 130,000 sittings days in the Crown Court; HMCTS has assessed that the Crown Court has used its allocation of sitting days; and the Lord Chancellor has made a statement to the House that this has not reduced the backlog.

Amendment 36, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (3) bringing sections 1 to 7 into force until he has—

(a) undertaken a consultation on the potential benefits of introducing extended sitting hours in the Crown Court, and

(b) laid before Parliament a report on the outcome of the consultation.

(3B) The consultation under subsection (3A) must consider—

(a) potential rates of fees and renumeration for legal professionals and court staff working extended hours, and

(b) the availability of HM Courts and Tribunal Service staff.”

This amendment would ensure that sections 1 to 7 of the Act did not come into force until the Lord Chancellor had reviewed how to increase sitting hours in the Crown Court.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The Minister said she could not support new clause 2 on RASSO courts tabled by the hon. Member for Warrington North, and other similar new clauses, because they would improve the experience of victims but do nothing to improve timelines. Well, I am delighted that my new clause 3 will address all those problems.

We all agree that what is needed is a proper plan to fix the system. My party and I believe that that starts with upping the number of trials in select courtrooms across England and Wales from one to two a day. Normal sitting hours for a Crown court are 10 am to 4.30 pm, during which only one trial is heard for four hours and 35 minutes, to allow for breaks for all those involved, including the judge and witnesses, and to allow for the jury to retire, because they receive a lot of information and need breaks too. The Liberal Democrats are calling for two trials to be heard per day in select courtrooms, split between morning and afternoon, with each trial sitting for four hours. One session would run from 9 am to 1 pm and another from 2 pm until 6 pm.

This simple change would nearly double court sitting time in those courtrooms. That is how to cut the backlog without eroding the right to a jury trial and jeopardising people’s experience of the justice system. Implementation would be determined at regional level by His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. Listing officers may schedule cases into morning or afternoon sessions or standard sitting hours according to the needs of the case. For example, an afternoon slot may be given to allow additional time for prisoner transport—we are all well-versed in the issues surrounding that contract—while standard hours may be preferable when a victim is expected to give evidence for an extended period.

Court backlogs are not the same everywhere and our reforms would reflect that. HMCTS would decide at regional level which courtrooms would run two trials a day, and we would consult on exactly how many should adopt that approach across England and Wales to ensure that the system works efficiently and delivers change where it is needed most. New clause 3 would allow for the agility and flexibility that the Minister spoke about when responding to the previous group of amendments. It could also have the intended effect of pulling back in retired judges. In my Chichester constituency, we have recently reopened our Crown court, and I am pretty sure that I have quite a few retired judges knocking around in the Witterings who would quite happily come back if they were able to commit to half a day’s session, and make sure that they were finished by lunch time and back on the beach by 2 pm.

During coronavirus, HMCTS conducted a pilot in Crown courts using exactly the system of two trials a day instead of one. The evidence was overwhelming: the pilot courtrooms got through 3.5 trials per week compared with fewer than 0.9 trials in courtrooms operating on standard hours. We simply want to replicate that trial across the country. That is how to get through the backlog without eroding jury trials. It would be an evidence-based approach, because we already have a pilot that speaks to its benefit.

As Leveson’s report points out, Crown court hearing time per sitting day has dropped to just 3.2 hours on average; in an entire day running from 10 am to 4.30 pm, the amount of actual sitting time has reduced to 3.2 hours. On paper, courts sit from 10 am until 4.30 pm, but in reality only a fraction of that time is spent hearing cases, because of delays, gaps, cancellations and other inefficiencies that we have discussed. Our reforms would more than double the hearing time per sitting day in participating courtrooms by eliminating that wasted time and running a more intensive court sitting day.

As the Leveson report highlighted, any solution to fix the backlog is going to require resources. These trials have to happen at some point, and without the investment that would be required for the provisions that I am laying out, we will just kick the can down the road and deny victims the justice they deserve. The proposals in the Bill would require massive investment to implement an entirely new system, including the introduction of the Crown court bench division. It would be slow, costly and, according to modelling by the Institute for Government, would save only around 2% of court time, with the caveat that other efficiencies would increase that figure. That barely makes a dent in the backlog when we are looking at the erosion of jury trials. Our approach would be faster and, because we have a pilot, there is clear evidence that it would actually work. By extending hours, we can reduce the backlog and deliver justice for victims. It would make use of existing resources, target inefficiencies and deliver real results.

I believe everybody would benefit from a condensed-hours model, which would provide additional time in the working day for practical work outside the court setting. It would mean that the court day was shorter for barristers, judges and juries; they would spend less time in the courtroom, which would give them more time, in a normal working day, outside the court, to make preparations for the following day. It would also mean much less waiting time.

When we look at what jurors say about their experience of taking part in trials, quite often the bit that they enjoyed and appreciated is the bit when they were actually in the courtroom and could see justice being done and felt like they were a part of it. So often, the most frustrating bit for jurors is the bit when they are sat in the green room outside waiting for the trial—all the time that they feel is wasted. If we condensed the model, a juror coming in for an afternoon session might be able to do the school run in the morning; a self-employed juror—we know that serving on a jury is really challenging for self-employed people—might be able to commit to a few hours of work; and those with caring responsibilities could make sure that they are there for one half of the day.

The evidence tells us that such a model would be better. Legal professionals with childcare responsibilities who took part in the pilot were more likely to report a positive experience than those without them. Right now, barristers and judges are being paid for a full day of work, despite doing on average 3.2 hours’ hearing time per sitting day due to scheduling inefficiencies because of all the other work that they are doing throughout their day, and including all the issues, such as the reasons that cases drop. Even if we paid barristers and judges a full day’s rate for only half a day’s sitting time, it would still be more efficient than the current system. It could also impact the issue of over-listing and floating cases. If a case cannot take place on a certain morning because another case has been listed, it could be scheduled for the afternoon, just four hours later, and the people who are ready to take part in it would not have to wait for another date months ahead.

New clause 4, tabled in my name, would require the Lord Chancellor to commission and lay before Parliament an independent report on the feasibility of introducing two court sittings per day in designated courtrooms, including an assessment of its impact on efficiency, resources and court users, and to set out the Government’s intended next step.

New clause 5, also tabled in my name, would require the Lord Chancellor to set and publish targets for reducing court backlogs and to report annually to Parliament on progress. The Government have recognised that increasing funding and removing the cap on sitting days will absolutely support a lot of those measures, but the new clause would require the Lord Chancellor to set and publish targets for reducing the backlogs. That is needed to avoid the slide that we have seen in the past and to ensure consistent progress in bringing down the backlog so that we can take a mindful approach to whether measures are working and whether we need to think about introducing others.

The Government have published predictions of growth in the backlog as evidence underpinning their reforms. They predict that the backlog would rise to 135,000, but the Criminal Bar Association pushed back against that figure; it thinks that it is wildly pessimistic, especially with the measures already introduced, such as taking away the cap on sitting days. The Deputy Prime Minister has said of his reforms that he does not expect the backlog to decrease until 2029 and that it will not be cleared for a decade. The backlog has now exceeded 80,000, but the backlogs at courts in Wales and in the north-west and south-east of England fell considerably after the sitting days were added, and that was prior to the effects of increasing sitting days across the board. The Criminal Bar Association said that the move was already having an effect. It cited Maidstone Crown court, the largest in the south-east outside the capital, where the case backlog had fallen by more than 5% in the past six months.

New clause 13 would require a report on the effect of the reforms in the Bill on public trust in the criminal justice system—another issue that we have discussed throughout the Committee’s proceedings. It has been demonstrated that the public have more confidence in juries than in single-judge hearings. I think we can all agree that trust in the justice system is vital for keeping witnesses, defendants and victims engaged. The new clause would require a report into the impact on public trust of the Government’s reforms. Currently, six in 10 people express a “fair amount” or a “great deal” of confidence in juries delivering the right verdict, compared with around four in 10 for courts and judges more generally.

New clause 17 would require the Secretary of State to review and report on whether the Bill has improved the efficiency of the criminal justice system, including its impact on delays, backlogs, and the experience of victims and witnesses. On a number of occasions, Brian Leveson discussed a three-pronged approach to dealing with the backlog—reform, funding and efficiencies. He also said that “all the levers” must be pulled, and the Minister has said the same. The “efficiencies” part of that three-pronged approach is largely set out in part 2 of his “Independent Review of the Criminal Courts”, to which the Government have yet to respond. Improving efficiency would safeguard the system from getting into this mess again, and it is vital that the Government pursue reforms that improve that. The new clause would therefore require the Secretary of State to review the Bill’s impact on efficiency in the criminal justice system, focusing specifically on delays, backlogs and victims’ experience.

New clause 22 would require the Lord Chancellor to publish a formal strategy for the use of remote proceedings to reduce the case backlog in the criminal justice system. Leveson himself suggests that the use of remote hearings with safeguards should be expanded to first hearings in the magistrates court, managed in police stations by prisoner escort and custody services contractors. He also proposes allowing for remote attendance during trial for certain professional witnesses, such as police officers, by default, and allowing remand defendants to attend sentencing hearings remotely, except when victim impact statements will be delivered.

Sir Brian Leveson outlined the need for more remote hearings, and we are calling on the Government to publish a strategy on how that will be implemented, because it is clear that there is potential for significant time savings and efficiencies if the Government get this right. It is also clear that investment will be needed in remote facilities not just in courts, but in prisons. Many people in the justice system have told me about evidence being presented on memory sticks, the telly not working, the sound not working when they are trying to listen to oral evidence, or the screen not working for somebody to give remote evidence. We need to know how the Government will strategise all the remote proceedings if they are going to progress in that way.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I appreciate the work the Minister is doing with the Prisons Minister. Can she explore something that has been reflected to me by court staff and judges working in the system? The PECS contract will say that it is delivering 99% of prisoners on time, and refer to the data that shows how many times PECS has delayed a case. But, because of the way we record the data in HMCTS, if a judge knows that the prisoner is not going to arrive until 11 am, they will make a decision not to sit until 12 pm. That is recorded as a judge’s decision, rather than reflecting that the reason for the delay is that the defendant has not been delivered to the court on time. Will the Minister take that away and work out whether there is a way of analysing and scrutinising the data slightly differently from how the PECS contract will try to explain it?

[Sarah Sackman]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. There is a mismatch between the performance data that PECS has recorded and the qualitative evidence that one hears from barristers and the judicial office as to the time that is being lost because prisoners are not being produced on time. One of the things we discussed in the first meeting of the oversight board was that we need to have a shared understanding of the data and how we capture it.

Another important theme, which we will come to in respect of another new clause, is remote hearings. Clearly, while we absolutely need to improve and speed up the operation of prisoner transport, and initiatives like opening up bus lanes are all to the good, we also have a demand issue. If we want to reduce the demand for prisoner transport, unless it is needed to further the interests of justice, one way to alleviate some of the pressure is to make greater use of remote hearings. This kind of cross-agency working and grip, with ministerial attention, as well as taking soundings and engaging with the Bar, which sees the effects every day, is going to be really important.

We are expanding case-progression functions and case co-ordinators to every Crown court; introducing staff with delegated judicial powers to focus on progressing cases; and sorting out problems that would otherwise take up judges’ time and reduce the hearing time that we spoke about earlier. All those things are under way and will drive at the problem. But I want to be honest with the hon. Member for Reigate, and others who maintain the argument that we should make the efficiencies and have the uncapped sitting days and the investment before we trouble ourselves with reform.

I am a realist, and when I look right across Government, questions of efficiency and productivity challenge our public services all the time. Of course we want our systems to be more efficient, and so we should—the taxpayer deserves nothing less—but we have the insight of the independent review, and our own modelling, which assumes that we have maximalist investment coupled with 5% efficiency gains year on year, and those two things together will not reduce the backlog. They temper it and dampen it down, but they do not cut into it. Assuming efficiency gains above 5% year on year would be optimistic for the system. If it were easy to do, previous Governments would no doubt have achieved it. I am not going to assume more than a 5% efficiency gain, because to do so would be setting ourselves up to fail.

This is probably the area where I take issue with the Institute for Government, because although it accepts, in broad terms, the time savings that can be made through our reform package—I understand that Members will say, “The assumptions are highly uncertain” and all the rest of it—it assumes that we can revert to the efficiency levels that existed pre-pandemic. It essentially assumes an efficiency gain of between 18% and 20% practically overnight, and I simply do not think that that is achievable.

Of course we want to drive improvements in prisoner transfer. Of course we hope that case co-ordinators will get the systems going through, and that blitz courts will work, particularly in London, where things are most acute. But I am not prepared to assume that all that will cumulatively amount to efficiency gains of more than 5% year on year, because we have all seen the lessons, not just from the criminal justice system but right across public services, in respect of how difficult efficiencies are to achieve.

That is why we are pulling every lever—not just the investment or the efficiency drive but the structural reforms—so that the investment is going into a reformed, modernised system that takes the decision to reallocate work to the magistrates court, where we know that cases are dealt with in a more timely and proportionate fashion, and out of the Crown court. That is what all these reforms amount to.

I know the establishment of the Crown court bench division keeps being cited because it will make a 2% saving, but we estimate that the package of measures taken together will make a 20% saving, because of the combined effect of the changes to magistrates courts’ sentencing powers and the magistrates retaining more work. We are pulling every lever because, when we combine all three levers, that will get the backlog down in the timeframe that the Deputy Prime Minister has set out in his various statements.

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I hope the hon. Member for Chichester can hear from what I have just said that we are on the case. We do not need to legislate for that strategy, but I am grateful for the opportunity to share some of the ways in which we are working at pace to deliver the sorts of changes that will modernise our court system and make it more timely and efficient for everyone involved.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to this group of amendments. We have talked heavily about efficiencies: the shadow Opposition and the Liberal Democrats have put forward alternative measures to improve efficiencies that were not explored in Leveson’s report. I asked Sir Brian if he had explored the concept of doing two trials a day. He said, “No, that wasn’t really something that I looked at.” But he was quite open to it. We had the same conversation that it seems the Minister had with him, where he said, “I used to be able to get through two trials in a day.” We know that that world does not exist any more.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Interestingly, we have been told all along that this is about the complexity of cases, yet the evidence is that the number of hours that things have been looked at has shrunk. To me, that is a much bigger issue. If we have fewer hours in a day to operate, of course it is going to take longer to get through complex cases.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is a worrying trend that the number of hours that are being used efficiently in Crown courts every day seems to be decreasing year on year.

The Minister spoke about not wanting to necessarily set a target. I agree with her: sometimes putting an arbitrary number on something does not actually reflect the situation. The previous Government attempted to do that, setting a target in 2019 to get the backlog down to a certain number. That does not always reflect the fact that the backlog could be a caseload 30,000 of the most complex cases that will take an incredibly long time to get to. Instead, we should look at the average time that it takes to get from charge to trial, and monitor whether we can bring that number down.

When I have talked about bringing that report to Parliament in new clause 5, it is not necessarily to say, “It was 80,000 and now it is 79,500,” because that does not reflect how long people are going to actually wait to have their cases heard. It is far more about the experiences of all of those people going through the system.

With regard to having reports established every year, the Minister spoke passionately, as she always does, about wanting to make sure that the reforms genuinely make a difference. But the Deputy Prime Minister has said that, even with all the reforms coming in together, he does not expect to see the backlog fall before the end of the Parliament. We need to be able to look at where the data is taking us every year, track what the backlog is doing, track the sorts of cases that are getting stuck in the backlog, and then scrutinise that, so that if there are other levers that can be pulled—whether they are things that have been suggested by me or by the shadow Minister—we have the opportunity to come back and review those things.

I am glad that the Minister recognises that trust in the criminal justice system is low anyway. It is not where it should be. I have said it before: the justice system is inextricably linked with how people view democracy. When trust in democracy is low, there is distrust in institutions, policing and the way our courts work. As cross-party parliamentarians, we have a duty to improve trust in all those systems. I worry that the measures in clauses 1 to 7 will not do that, but will erode trust.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 7 would require the Lord Chancellor to lay before Parliament a strategy for victim-led case management in relation to criminal court proceedings. The Government have highlighted the challenges that victims face in their briefings on the Bill’s provisions in both the media and the Chamber. As we all know, it is victims who have been affected by the horrendous backlogs that we see today, and I have no doubt that the unacceptable delays will have caused victims of crime to step away or choose not to pursue the criminal justice route at all.

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[Sarah Sackman]

Let me begin, as we all have in this Committee, by acknowledging the challenges that victims face in accessing the information and support they need. We have talked about the Government’s drive to centre victims in the criminal justice process.

I have a couple of things to say in response to new clause 7. First, there is lots of work under way. For example, on 5 February this year we launched a consultation on a new victims code to ensure that we get the foundations right for victims. Through the connecting criminal justice data programme, we are aiming to strengthen data sharing by seeing how we can both track and share that data with victims, as appropriate. We have published statutory guidance on independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers, recommending best practice for those roles. Of course, we have also begun to roll out the independent legal adviser service for rape victims. We have also undertaken consistent engagement; I met the Victims’ Commissioner just yesterday to discuss some of the ways in which we can marshal the over £500 billion-worth of investment that the Government have made in victims services, so that we can ensure that we have a victim-centred approach.

Case management is ultimately a matter for the judiciary, but taking into account the impact that delays in processes have on victims will of course form an important part of that. I would say that a publication strategy is not a matter best addressed through primary legislation, but I understand the thrust behind the hon. Lady’s proposal, and it is one that we would agree with.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The Minister mentions the increased funding to victims support services, which I know is a really important arm of what the Government are trying to achieve. I would just caution that some of the victims support services that I have spoken to have said that, because of the length of the backlogs and the delays in the current system, the increase in funding has only allowed them to maintain the status quo, because they are now supporting people for much longer, and they are trying to make sure that they stay engaged in the process. It has not allowed them to change up their practices or introduce some of the best practice that they would like to see, just because of the length of time for which they are now supporting victims through the system. I just wanted to get that on the record.

[Sarah Sackman]

I absolutely recognise what the hon. Lady says. That is why I come back to this: swifter justice for victims is the guiding principle behind all these reforms. As she says, the longer people are stuck waiting for their day in court, the longer they need to be supported. It becomes a vicious cycle, because we must expend more resource on victim support to keep them engaged in the process. It is not just that we do that for longer; it gets harder the longer they are stuck in the backlog. I very much agree with her: I would rather that money were redeployed to enhance what those victim support agencies can do. I do not think primary legislation is the vehicle for it, but I absolutely agree with the sentiment. I urge her to withdraw her new clause.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I am pleased the Minister recognises the Government must go a long way to do more for victims, but it is getting harder for services such as victim support to manage an ever-increasing caseload. I am keen to press this new clause to a vote, because the idea of victim-led case management, which many of the courts are keen to adopt, is a key tenet of improving victims’ experience in the system.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 9—Judicial training: violence against women and girls—

“(1) Any member of the judiciary who may be assigned to proceedings for a trial on indictment without a jury must have access to training on matters relating to violence against women and girls.

(2) Training provided under subsection (1) must cover—

(a) the nature and dynamics of violence against women and girls, including—

(i) domestic abuse,

(ii) sexual violence,

(iii) coercive control, and

(iv) so-called honour-based abuse;

(b) best practice in hearing cases involving violence against women and girls, including ensuring fair and trauma-informed proceedings.

(3) The Lord Chancellor must by regulations specify how often members of the judiciary must undertake such training.

(4) The Lord Chancellor must lay an annual report before Parliament on the provision and uptake of training provided under this section.”

This new clause requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on violence against women and girls.

New clause 10—Judicial training: domestic abuse—

“(1) Any member of the judiciary who may be assigned to proceedings for a trial on indictment without a jury must have access to training on matters relating to domestic abuse.

(2) Training provided under subsection (1) must cover—

(a) the nature and dynamics of domestic abuse, including physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, and economic abuse, as well as controlling or coercive behaviour;

(b) best practice in the management of cases involving domestic abuse, including ensuring fair and trauma-informed proceedings.

(3) The Lord Chancellor must by regulations specify how often members of the judiciary must undertake such training.

(4) The Lord Chancellor must lay an annual report before Parliament on the provision and uptake of training provided under this section.”

This new clause requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on domestic abuse.

New clause 30—Duty to provide trauma-informed training—

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must ensure that appropriate training is made mandatory for members of all court staff working in the criminal courts on best practice in relation to victims' trauma.

(2) Training under subsection (1) must include—

(a) the nature, prevalence, and impact of domestic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, and rape and serious sexual offences (‘RASSO’);

(b) the dynamics and psychological effects of trauma on parties and witnesses involved in proceedings;

(c) the identification and appropriate handling of cases involving domestic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, and RASSO offences;

(d) the ways in which trauma may affect memory, communication, behaviour, and engagement with court proceedings;

(e) best practices for reducing retraumatisation within court and tribunals settings.

(3) Training provided under this section must—

(a) on initial appointment to a role within a court, and at regular intervals thereafter;

(b) reflect current best practice and be informed by up-to-date research and guidance;

(c) be developed in consultation with appropriate experts, including specialist support organisations and persons with lived experience of abuse and trauma.

(4) The Lord Chancellor must keep the training under review and revise it as appropriate.

(5) The Lord Chancellor must publish guidance on the implementation of this section.”

This new clause would require the Lord Chancellor to ensure that members of the court staff working in the criminal courts receive mandatory, consistent training on trauma-informed practice to improve understanding of how trauma affects victims’ evidence, behaviour, and engagement with court proceedings.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Me again. The new clauses would require provision for the training of the judiciary and, under new clause 30, for court staff. Each of these clauses focuses on a different area. New clause 8 focuses on discrimination against ethnic minorities, including racial bias and the impact on judicial decision making. New clause 9 requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on violence against women and girls. New clause 10 requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on domestic abuse. New clause 30 requires the Lord Chancellor to ensure that all members of court staff working in the criminal justice system receive mandatory and consistent training on trauma-informed practices, to improve understanding of how trauma affects victims’ experience, behaviour and engagement with court proceedings.

The reasons for the new clauses—they are tabled for basically every part of justice legislation—are that there is real frustration among organisations and charities working in the criminal justice space that Parliament does not have the ability to legislate for the judiciary to have mandatory training. How do we square the circle of all those campaign organisations sounding the alarm and saying that, in order for us to make these very serious changes in moving to judge-alone trials, we must ensure that judges approach them with trauma-informed practices in mind?

That was raised in the evidence session by Farah Nazeer from Women’s Aid. When we asked her, “What would you need to see in order for this Bill to give you the confidence that victims will have a better experience and women will be better supported through the criminal justice system?” she said:

“One is training for the entirety of the court staff, because the stories that we hear and the experiences that we support women and children through are frankly appalling. The staff are not trauma-informed and there is no understanding of what a victim is going through. The courts are weaponised and survivors are brought back to the courts repeatedly. It is an appalling process. No policy area that you work on at Women’s Aid is a picnic, but this is the worst.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 27, Q53.]

In the same evidence session, Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner, said:

“I have made that point for years, regardless of these reforms. We have to improve and get reassurance around judicial training, including training on cultural competency, on understanding bias and prejudice and on the dynamics of abuse. We still see issues around coercive control, post-separation abuse and stalking. I need to be reassured that judges are being trained to the level that will give assurances to victims and to myself that they understand what is coming in front of them.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 14, Q25.]

I know that there has been significant progress, and that the organisation Fair Hearing has worked closely with the judiciary to do training about violence against women and girls and to make sure that judges are trauma-informed in their practice, but it is not mandatory. One comment that stuck with me from the evidence session was from Charlotte, one of the victims who presented evidence. She noted, of her judge:

“She said that, because I waited eight months to report, I was unreliable, and that I had clearly spoken to other victims of domestic abuse, so I knew what to say. Those comments really stuck by me.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 26, Q51.]

The very concept that a judge looks at somebody who is trying to share their experiences and says, “Well, they’ve just trained for this,” is pretty appalling. It causes me to doubt that all judges are engaging in the judiciary training as effectively as they could be.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

I seek clarity on whether the new clause would apply to all judges or just to those in the criminal courts. In the family court the idea is to bring in expertise around the sort of issues that she talks about from agencies—such as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and even social services—in which there are lots of trained people, but that system does not always ensure that the judge is best placed to make a good decision, as we have seen in evidence. Will the hon. Lady clarify that point?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The feeling of the organisations and charities that I have spoken to is that everybody in the judiciary should have the opportunity to go through trauma-informed training and training around violence against women and girls, around coercive control and around recognising and identifying racial bias so we can make sure that every victim is confident—whether they are going through the criminal or the family justice system—that everybody they will come in contact with understands them and the additional support that they may require.

I am sure that the Minister will say that the Government cannot mandate training because the judiciary are independent. New clause 30 aims to make sure that members of court staff, who are employed by His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, receive mandatory and consistent training on trauma-informed practice because they are the people who will support victims and witnesses through the criminal justice system. We clearly need to change our approach. In the evidence session, witnesses described an environment that is hostile to witnesses; we need one that stands up for their interests. Our new clause 30 should be the bare minimum across the courts estate, and represents a position supported by a number of organisations.

[Sarah Sackman]

I entirely agree that training, in all the respects that the hon. Member for Chichester speaks about, is key, whether it is training on equal treatment or on a trauma-informed approach to rape and serious sexual offences, or specific training pertaining to domestic abuse and identification of coercive and controlling behaviour, or to ensure the consistent application of special measures and evaluation of expert input into trauma-informed practice.

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We do need to respect and preserve that judicial independence, and we should not be in the position of directing the judiciary. However, that close engagement and encouragement of greater transparency is all to the good to make the very best of this courts transformation programme.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the Minister for her remarks. I am still keen to see progress to ensure that everybody in the judiciary has that mandatory training. As we start to accept that domestic abuse so often plays a part in our criminal justice system—both for defendants and witnesses—and with the Government having made great strides in introducing a domestic abuse identifier for those who cannot be sentenced for a crime of domestic abuse, I think that having specially ticketed judges is something that we need to move away from. Instead, we should make sure that all judges have that special ticket, because they never know if they are hearing a case where a witness is taking somebody to court based on one thing but other things might be going on in the background. Having that trauma-informed training is really important and I will be seeking to push this new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 27—Pilot of trial allocation reforms (No. 2)—

(1) The Lord Chancellor may not make regulations bringing sections 1 to 5 of this Act into force unless he has first made arrangements for a pilot scheme for the provision of those sections in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).

(2) A pilot scheme must—

(a) be for the purpose of trialling all provisions of sections 1 to 5 of this Act;

(b) be for such a period as the Lord Chancellor may by regulations specify, provided that the period under paragraph (a) is met;

(c) take place in at least one location in England and Wales as the Lord Chancellor may by regulations specify.

(3) Within 12 months of the conclusion of the pilot scheme under subsection (2), the Lord Chancellor must—

(a) assess the impact of the pilot scheme on—

(i) the timeliness of the disposal of cases included in the pilot scheme,

(ii) appeal rates relating to those cases,

(iii) the outcomes of those cases,

(iv) defendants’ access to trial by jury, and

(v) public confidence in the criminal justice system; and

(b) Lay before Parliament a report on the assessment under paragraph (a).”

This new clause would require the Government to pilot the removal of the right to elect trial by jury before national implementation, and to report to Parliament on its impact.

Amendment 16, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“, subject to the provisions of subsection (3A).

(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make regulations under subsection (3) relating to the following sections until the pilot in accordance of section [Pilot of trial allocation reforms (No. 2)] has been concluded—

(a) Section 1 (Removal of right to elect trial on indictment);

(b) Section 2 (Written indication of guilty plea: removal of right to object to venue);

(c) Section 3 (Trial on indictment without a jury: general rule for allocation);

(d) Section 4 (Trial on indictment without a jury: complex or lengthy cases);

(e) Section 5 (Consequential amendments relating to sections 3 and 4);

(f) Section 6 (Increase in maximum custodial sentence in magistrates’ courts);

(g) Section 7 (Appeals from magistrates’ courts).”

This amendment is consequential on NC11.

Amendment 60, in clause 26, page 35, line 19, at end insert—

“, subject to the provisions of subsection (3A).

(3A) The Lord Chancellor may not make regulations under subsection (3) relating to the following sections until the pilot in accordance of section [Pilot of trial allocation reforms (No. 2)] has been concluded—

(a) Section 1 (Removal of right to elect trial on indictment);

(b) Section 2 (Written indication of guilty plea: removal of right to object to venue);

(c) Section 3 (Trial on indictment without a jury: general rule for allocation);

(d) Section 4 (Trial on indictment without a jury: complex or lengthy cases);

(e) Section 5 (Consequential amendments relating to sections 3 and 4).”

This amendment is consequential on NC27.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The new clause is consequential on amendment 16. Amendment 16 would require the Government to pilot the removal of the right to elect trial by jury before national implementation and report to Parliament on its impact.

The design of these reforms has not been tested in practice, and there are many different estimations of their impact on the backlog. The Institute for Government’s modelling suggests that that is likely to be around a 7% to 10% reduction in total time taken in the courtroom, with just 1.5% to 2.5% of that coming from the introduction of judge-only trials in the Crown court bench division. The Government’s impact assessment indicates an expected saving of 27,000 Crown court sitting days. That is based on the fact that cases heard in the bench division will reduce the time per hearing by 20%.

That 20% figure is an estimate that Sir Brian Leveson uses in part 1 of his independent report of the criminal courts. He is explicit that, should the Ministry of Justice

“consider pursuing this course of action, it may wish to consider undertaking further detailed analysis in order to understand the potential time-saving fully.”

That figure is based on a different package of reforms. Sir Brian includes the reclassification of some offences and the removal of the right to elect for some low-level figures.

The Government have used the 20% figure as a starting point, which is problematic. It is the number that informs their modelling, but there is no concrete data to prove that this would be the case. Policymaking must always be evidence-led. That imperative is even more urgent when such legislative reforms restrict fundamental rights. Time savings must be considered holistically. With no juries in the bench division, judges will have to provide a reasoned judgment for their decision. The Bill stipulates that this judgment must state the specific reasons for the conviction or acquittal. That represents a change from traditional jury trials, where juries do not provide written or spoken reasons for their verdict. The composition of these judgments will be time consuming for judges, who will have to ensure that their conclusions are legally tight. If the Government truly believe that the reforms laid out in the Bill will genuinely reduce the backlog, they should prove it before making a change to our justice system that we will never see reversed.

[Sarah Sackman]

We are not going to do a pilot, not because piloting is not a good idea per se, but because a pilot would necessitate legislation, which is why the hon. Lady has proposed it in this way, and because it would lead to a criminal justice system with different models running in parallel. That is okay—that happens with pilots and trying new things, I understand that—but fundamentally we are not piloting the changes to courts because of the extent of the crisis we are in.

We need to bear down on the backlogs. We are satisfied that we have the evidence that the package of reforms will deliver significant time savings in the Crown court to achieve those efficiencies. We think we have struck the right balance between access to jury trial and speeding up the courts. For that reason, we maintain that we do not need to do a pilot here.

We do not have anything against piloting per se, but in a world in which the demands on our criminal justice system are changing, we must keep up. We have thought long and hard, based on independent review. I would suggest that that is an evidence base.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Sackman]

I will take one short intervention.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

If the Government will not agree to a pilot or to a report that would allow us to scrutinise whether the changes that they have introduced in the Bill actually make a difference to the Crown court, how are Labour and opposition MPs able to scrutinise whether these changes have made a fundamental difference to the backlog, especially if a sunset clause, which I am sure we will get on to shortly, is not included?

I totally recognise Sir Brian Leveson’s eminence and experience—he is right to point that out and has written a very comprehensive report—but people with thousands of years of combined experience within the criminal justice system are saying this will do nothing to reduce the backlog. I therefore would like the Minister’s guidance on how Members from across the House are supposed to scrutinise these decisions to see if they make a difference, if the Government will not agree to things like pilots or reports.

[Sarah Sackman]

I do not accept that the vast majority of the changes we are introducing are unprecedented; in the main, we are shifting caseload from the Crown court to the magistrates court, and we already have a way of testing that. Trials for either-way offences, some of which are already retained in the magistrates court, give us a direct comparison. People can elect the Crown court, and we can see that those retained in the magistrates court are dealt with more promptly.

We also saw evidence from international comparators, as well as from experienced judges. We think these are the right measures, and not only to deal with the backlog; they also have a normative basis in striking the right balance between defendant’s rights and those of complainants and victims. We think that is right. I understand that the Opposition disagree, but we think, based on the expert review we were provided with, that this is the right package. We do not think there is a need for a pilot, nor is there a need for a sunset clause.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I would still like to press my new clause to a vote, because having a pilot we can refer to, as in the earlier two-trials model, is really important. We should be data and evidence led as a Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause would give victims a right to receive, free of charge, court transcripts on judicial summings-up and bail decisions relevant to their case. It would require that transcripts be provided within 14 days of a request and clarify that this right would applies whether or not the victim gave evidence in the case.

We spoke earlier in Committee about the important role of court transcripts. I recognise the challenges that the Government have in rolling out large-scale reforms to the way that we currently do court transcripts. The new clause is slightly more limited in its scope, because it specifically calls for transcripts on judicial summings-up and bail decisions relevant to the victim’s case. I know that the Government are doing a great deal in trying to move the dial on making sure that we slowly get to the point where everybody has access to court transcripts. As a spokesperson for an opposition party, I will continue to put pressure on the Government wherever I can to try and push them to go further and faster in this regard. I will not press the new clause to a vote.

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak briefly in support of the new clause. Whenever we talk about narrowed elements of a transcript, I always think to myself that, in giving these remarks, the judge will hopefully have written them down and not be doing these sorts of things off the top of their head. That is why I struggle to understand why these more limited elements are not more meaningful and easily available.

If a judge does not happen to write these sorts of things down, I do not think it will be much to ask them to do so and to make it so that the transcript can be quickly and easily checked. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Chichester will not press the new clause to a vote, but as she mentioned, in any opportunity we get we should push the issue of transcripts. It is particularly important in relation to, as we will come to talk about, the unduly lenient sentence scheme, because all these things would help somebody, in theory, to give an appeal a shot. If they do not have that sort of thing, it is much more difficult.

[Sarah Sackman]

The hon. Member for Chichester rightly acknowledges the significant amount of work that the Government are currently undertaking in this space, and we had an opportunity to debate that in Committee earlier.

In relation to the new clause, it might be worth briefly explaining why such an extension would not provide significant benefits compared with the systems already in place. In relation to bail decisions, a transcript of the hearing is rarely informative for victims. What victims need and want to know, and what the victims code already requires, is for victims to be informed of the outcome of the bail hearing and any conditions imposed. Those updates are already provided to victims by victim witness care units within five working days. We are currently exploring how responsibilities under the code are being met by the relevant service providers and how to better support them in the delivery of the code. To strengthen that further, once commenced, the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 will introduce a compliance framework, requiring criminal justice bodies to keep their performance against the code under review.

Transcripts of judicial summings-up are unlikely to add significant value for many victims. Those remarks are given before the jury begins to deliberate and are intended to guide them by summarising the evidence and setting out the relevant law. They are not, and cannot be, a reflection of the jury’s decision. Without the full context of the trial, they may risk causing confusion rather than providing clarity. Before being released, summings-up must be manually reviewed to ensure that they are accurate. That, too, is resource intensive. In looking at where we can roll out making transcripts available at either low or no cost, we must target those areas that add value for the public and victims.

As I said when we discussed this last Thursday, we are focused on driving improvement for the longer term. That is why we are undertaking a study in the use of AI to transcribe court hearings. The findings will identify what is possible from AI transcription in a Crown court setting, in considering how to make the provision of transcripts more cost-effective. I think we are in a good place. As the hon. Member for Chichester says, there is more to do, and the Government would be grateful for work across the House to see how we can drive greater transparency in transcription in our Crown courts, but I urge her to withdraw her new clause.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I am happy to withdraw the new clause, on the basis that the Government continue to work on the measures that they have already introduced. Let me quickly put on the record the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who has been campaigning for access to court transcripts for many years. She is delighted that we are now seeing progress. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 13

Report on the effect of the Act on public trust and participation in the criminal justice system

“(1) The Lord Chancellor must commission a report on the effect of the provisions of the Act on public trust and participation in the judicial system.

(2) A report under this section must—

(a) include consideration of the effect of the provisions of the Act on—

(i) witness participation;

(ii) the effect of these reforms on public confidence and trust in the criminal justice system;

(iii) the effect of these provisions on BAME engagement with and trust of the criminal justice system;

(b) contain recommendations for further provision, or changes to delivery of provision under this Act, to increase the levels of each criterion set out in subparagraphs (2)(a)(i) to (2)(a)(iii).

(3) Within twelve months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed, the Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament—

(a) a copy of a report under this section,

(b) the Lord Chancellor’s response to recommendations made by that report.”—(Jess Brown-Fuller.)

This new clause would require the Lord Chancellor to commission, lay, and respond to a report on the effect of the Bill on public trust in the criminal justice system.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 24—Expiry of sections 1 to 7—

“(1) Sections 1 to 7 of this Act expire three months after the date on which the condition in subsection (2) is met.

(2) The condition is that number of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court has been below pre-pandemic level in each of the previous four quarterly reporting periods.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (2) the number of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court is that which is calculated by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.”

This new clause sunsets sections 1 to 7 of this Act so that they will not longer be in force once the court backlog has been resolved.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The new clause is a sunset clause that would require a report on the effectiveness of certain provisions of the Bill. If the report found that the provisions were not effective, the Secretary of State would have to bring forward regulations to repeal them; if it found that they were effective, the Secretary of State would have to set a deadline for their repeal and a return to full jury trials.

The design of these reforms has not been tested in practice. There are many different estimations of their impact on the backlog, and if they are shown to not be effective, they must not continue. If they prove to be effective at reducing the backlog, full jury trials could be reinstated when the backlog is reduced and we are working at a level that the criminal justice system can cope with.

[Dr Mullan]

My new clause 24 and new clause 18 in the name of the hon. Member for Chichester seek to achieve a similar outcome. Although there is broad agreement that the backlog is a challenging issue that must be addressed, we believe that any measure that curtails jury trial rights in such a significant—and, I would say, unprecedented—way should be proportionate to the problem it seeks to solve and be used only for as long as absolutely necessary while we are presented with this problem. Therefore, we propose a sunset clause to ensure that the powers expire once the court backlog has returned to pre-pandemic levels for a sustained period.

A sunset clause is a measure in a statute that provides for a law or specific provisions to cease to be effective after a predetermined date, or once a specific condition is met, unless Parliament takes further action to renew them. Although they have experienced a resurgence in recent decades as a tool for managing extraordinary or controversial measures, sunset clauses have been employed by Parliament since at least 1500. Historically and in contemporary practice, they serve vital democratic functions. They are used to facilitate the passage of controversial legislation by assuring critics and the public that the measures are temporary, rather than a permanent erosion. They act as a safeguard for democracy, particularly when emergency legislation is required, by preventing the normalisation of extraordinary powers.

Furthermore, sunset clauses create a more formal trigger for post-legislative scrutiny, forcing both the Executive and the legislature to revisit their assumptions and evaluate whether a law has been effective before deciding whether to prolong its life. The Terrorism Act 2006 and the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 both utilise sunsetting or recurring renewal requirements to ensure ongoing parliamentary oversight. More recently, sunset clauses were used in covid-19 legislation to ensure that restrictive measures did not extend longer than necessary. The UK Coronavirus Act 2020 contained a two-year sunset clause and a requirement for six-monthly reviews to determine whether temporary provisions should expire early.

When considering radical changes to our trial system during a time of crisis, we should look to our history for a more direct precedent. During world war two, a period when our continued existence as a free nation was genuinely uncertain, the Government of the day did not choose to radically cut down the use of jury trials or erode the right of the citizen to elect to be judged by their peers. Instead, they reduced the number of jurors from 12 to seven. Importantly, that was a temporary adjustment. As soon as the Nazi threat was defeated, the Government of the day restored the number of jurors to 12. That demonstrates a principled understanding that emergency measures taken in response to a temporary crisis should be reversed once that crisis is resolved.

In contrast, the measures before us today regarding the erosion of jury trials and the abolition of the right to elect are drafted as permanent changes to our statute book, with no built-in mechanism for their reversal once the backlog is managed again. As I have said, that is a significant departure from the most closely related historical example of what we did during even the darkest days of the 1940s.

Our sunset clause would tie the duration of these reforms to the very problem they are intended to fix. The Government’s case is that these are necessary, backlog-driven measures, and it is entirely consistent to state that they should expire once that backlog is brought down to a more historically normal level, which we define as the pre-pandemic level—a level that the system was able to manage sufficiently, if not perfectly, without the need for structural erosion of the right to a jury.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 35, which I tabled last week after a conversation with the Victims’ Commissioner, would reinstate an inspectorate body for the criminal courts in England and Wales. The Courts Act 2003 introduced His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration, which was established in 2005. The inspectorate was then closed in 2010, with the then Government arguing that audits of HMCTS, combined with the inspection regimes of the current justice inspectorates and the National Audit Office, negated the need for HMICA. However, a 2022 Justice Committee report found that that argument had not stood the test of time, and it called for the re-establishment of an inspectorate body. The report stated:

“A Courts’ Inspectorate, which is independent from Government, could make a substantial difference to the accountability and transparency of the justice system. It could use inspections and the promised improvements to the quality of the data to make recommendations that can inform policy and guidance in both criminal and civil justice. An inspectorate could also help to monitor the use of technology in the courts.”

This is a really important time to introduce the additional level of having a courts’ inspectorate, especially when the use of technology will play a much larger role in the criminal justice system, as well as the quality of the data coming out, which the Committee has debated various times. The proposal was backed by Andrew Cayley KC, then chief inspector for the Crown Prosecution Service. He favoured an even broader court inspection regime to scrutinise the operation of the disjointed parts of the system, particularly regarding the listing of cases. The re-establishment of a courts inspectorate was also recommended by Sir Brian Leveson in part 2 of his independent review of the criminal courts; it was recommendation 58. While there are four criminal justice inspectorates, Sir Brian notes:

“There is, however, no one body that is responsible for the inspection of the criminal courts in England and Wales.”

Due to limitations to the scope of this Bill, our new clause proposes a criminal courts inspectorate that would inspect and report on the administration and operation of the criminal courts. The new clause stipulates that that inspectorate must have

“particular regard to the experience of witnesses and victims”

when assessing

“the efficiency, effectiveness and accessibility of those courts”.

An inspectorate would identify inefficiencies and monitor victims’ experience in the system.

When debating an earlier group, the Minister mentioned what I think she called a public governance board that she is exploring. It would be helpful if she could outline whether she sees my new clause as different from that, or whether she is looking to create an additional level of inspection and scrutiny in the criminal courts system.

[Dr Mullan]

As I have alluded to several times, the Conservative party is considering more broadly how we tackle judicial accountability in all its different elements. It would be premature for us to settle on this new clause if, as the hon. Member for Chichester pointed out, it had to be necessarily narrow to fit in the Bill. On that basis we will not vote for it. We are not against it as an idea, but we need greater time to think about accountability and performance in the justice system in a more comprehensive way.

[Sarah Sackman]

I agree with the sentiment behind the new clause to ensure that we are monitoring efficiency, effectiveness and performance across our criminal courts system. However, as the shadow Justice Minister just said, the best mechanisms for holding the system to account in terms of performance and judicial accountability merit greater reflection. We are taking the time to consider the IRCC’s recommendations. The hon. Member for Chichester alluded to the history, and that there has previously been an inspectorate of court administration; that of course ceased operation under the coalition Government, who found it unnecessary at the time.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The Minister is absolutely right that it ceased operation, but the report that led to that decision was published under a Labour Government. Does she recognise that that report was actually tabled in 2009, and that it was the coalition Government that carried out the function of the report that the Labour Government put forward?

[Sarah Sackman]

I think the hon. Member thinks that I rose to make some really brilliant, devastating party political point. I did not; I was just rehearsing the history of how we got here. At the time, the view was taken by those who finally took the axe to the inspectorate that it did not represent value for money and was not working in an effective way. I make that point to say that, if we are going to have an inspectorate that does some of the things we want it to do, or whatever system we alight on, we all want to ensure that it represents value for money and drives better performance. Clearly, the Government of the day did not think that it did.

No inspectorate would have scope to scrutinise judicial decisions. It is also important to say—there have been improvements in this regard—that extensive operational data and metrics, which everyone is welcome to look at, provide an insight into the performance of our criminal courts, whether in terms of case timeliness, conviction rates or sentencing outcomes. That is exactly as it should be.

At this point, my focus is on driving reform, modernisation and the proper delivery of the investment that we are making, rather than on the inspection landscape, but I do not disagree with the sentiment that lies behind the hon. Member for Chichester’s new clause. Getting the mechanism right and taking our time to think about what form it should take, and how it could be properly resourced and as effective as we want it to be is something that we all want to take our time over, so I urge the hon. Member to withdraw her new clause.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

In the tradition of the last five days in Committee, I will push the new clause to a vote because I would like to see greater scrutiny of the way that our court system functions.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.