Jury Trials

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Sackman]

I could not agree more. As I am someone with responsibility for the recruitment of our magistrates, I know my hon. Friend will have seen in the early headlines this year that we are looking for more magistrates. We want them to be more diverse, younger and from different parts of the country and different backgrounds. As I said, our magistracy has halved in the last 10 years. I want to see us turn that around as we place our confidence in our magistrates to continue handling the vast majority of criminal cases, which they do at the moment.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My first job after graduating was in a magistrates court, which was just making the transition from writing court records in a huge ledger by hand to computerisation; I appreciate that it has modernised an awful lot since then. Let me pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) about the impact of persistent drug dealing on local communities. One of the things being piloted in Bristol is an intensive supervision court. We know that a huge number of crimes are committed by people with persistent drug addictions, so if we can divert them from the criminal justice system it will help to free up our courts. Can the Minister say a little about what we are doing to roll out that programme?