Criminal Justice

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

The Chancellor substantially increased the budget of the Ministry of Justice in the spending review from £11.9 billion in 2023-24 to £15.6 billion in 2028-29. We are told that that is a real-terms increase of 3.1% over five years. It is our duty in this place not just to applaud ever larger sums of money being spent, but to scrutinise whether that money is spent well and to ensure it represents good value for money for the taxpayer. There is no question but that the criminal justice system is under strain. I trust the Lord Chancellor will do her best to ensure that she uses the money wisely to fix the various problems the Chairman of the Select Committee has described.

One of the biggest problems facing the criminal justice system is the Crown court backlog. As of the end of 2024, almost 75,000 cases were awaiting trial. That is an increase on the figure when the Lord Chancellor took office and it is projected to rise further. Justice delayed is justice denied. Witnesses’ memories fade and victims feel that they have been forgotten. I appreciate that much of that rise was caused by the pandemic, and we are still dealing with the fallout, but the Lord Chancellor must do more to reduce that backlog.

Although there is more money for the courts as part of the spending review, we need to ensure it is effectively deployed. The Government say it is a priority, yet we still have empty courtrooms. When the Lady Chief Justice came to Parliament last November, she offered 6,500 additional sitting days. Will the Minister explain why the Lord Chancellor did not accept every single one of the extra days offered? The Lord Chancellor must use the additional money she has been given to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of both the Crown and magistrates courts, and to reduce the backlogs.

The justice system also faces a lack of prison spaces. The Gauke review, commissioned by the Lord Chancellor, has effectively recommended the ending of short prison sentences in favour of community sentences. About half of admissions to prison are for sentences of less than 12 months. The Howard League says that about 30,000 people a year are sentenced to six months or less. Setting aside for one moment whether that is the right policy, which I doubt, if it is implemented by the Government it will require a very large increase in the number of probation officers.

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

My hon. Friend talks about probation and prison places. Does he share my concern that it is all very well for the Government to announce £7 billion to deliver prison places by 2031, which is six years away, while 16,000 prisoners are walking the streets because they were released earlier by this Government? What will happen in the next six years? Will more prisoners be released early while we wait for those prison places?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

The danger is that the public lose confidence in the criminal justice system if prisoners are released so early. As I mentioned, there is already a shortfall of nearly 2,000 probation officers. In fact, there are now 200 fewer probation officers than when Labour took office. If the Government intend to go ahead with this plan, we need to know how they plan to recruit the additional probation officers that they will need. What is their plan? If they go ahead with abolishing short sentences, those community sentences will have to be seen by the public to be really tough and worthwhile if the criminal justice system is to retain confidence. I fear that the Government do not have a plan for that. Although we see more money allocated in the budget for prison and probation services, we do not get any detail about what that means for the recruitment of those extra probation officers. I would be grateful if the Minister could address that point.

I also ask the Government to look at other methods of alleviating the strain on prison places that do not involve additional expenditure—for example, deporting foreign national offenders. There are currently 11,000 foreign offenders in our prisons, but our record on deporting them remains poor. Only 3,500 were deported last year, and too many are still able to avoid deportation by using the European convention on human rights. This needs to change. The Government have said that they will review the right to family life being used in appeals in serious cases related to asylum seekers who have been convicted of sexual offences. I welcome that, but we need to go much further. We should deport all foreign national offenders at the end of their sentences and disapply the Human Rights Act.

The obvious way to ensure that we have enough prison spaces in the longer term is to build more prisons. During the general election campaign, Labour promised to build 20,000 additional places, but in the year since the Government took office, little progress has been made, and it was recently revealed that they have actually cut hundreds of millions of pounds from the capital budget to cover the cost of pay increases for staff and the imposition of the Chancellor’s jobs tax.

It is always tempting to welcome an increase to a Department’s budget, but we need to ensure that the spending is matched by proper accountability and planning. We cannot afford for this new funding to be simply absorbed by justice bureaucracy. Will the Minister explain how much of the extra money that his Department has been allocated will go in additional national insurance charges, wage rises and inflation? It is simply not credible to make countless promises in opposition or on the campaign trail, only to quietly shelve them when in office. The Opposition will hold the Government to account for the commitments they have given.

--- Later in debate ---

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

I, too, am a member of the Justice Committee. I am also a former prosecutor who worked in the criminal justice system.

Today is an opportunity not only to examine the Ministry of Justice’s estimates for the coming year, but to assess whether our criminal justice system is being resourced to meet the scale of the challenges it faces and to make our communities safer. I want to talk about the sentencing review and its impact on resourcing, especially for the Probation Service.

We inherited a system that was on the brink of collapse. The 2024 report on prison population growth revealed that England and Wales had the highest per capita prison population in western Europe. Our Government had to respond to that crisis immediately on entering into office. My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary’s temporary early release scheme was a difficult but necessary decision to protect the justice system from breaking altogether, and to ensure that dangerous offenders were not turned away from the courts due to lack of space.

[Joe Robertson]

The hon. Member referred to the early release scheme as temporary. Is she 100% confident that it is a temporary scheme, and that the Government will not release more prisoners over the next few years?

[Linsey Farnsworth]

We inherited a particularly drastic situation, which will not be turned around overnight. The Minister will speak on behalf of the Government, but I expect the Government to make these difficult decisions until we are in a better position. That may have to be reviewed in due course. I do not speak for the Government, but I trust them to ensure that the public are safe and that there are places available, by whatever means, so that dangerous criminals can be put in jail.

We must move beyond crisis management. This mission-driven Labour Government are investing to deliver 14,000 new prison places by 2031. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) was right to point out that that contrasts starkly with the 500 prison places that the previous Government created in 14 years. However, it is clear that the solution to overcrowding cannot simply be to build more prisons, but instead lies in breaking the cycle of reoffending.