Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Dillon Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

As the hon. Member rightly says, prison officers do an outstanding job. The work of the Prison Service is to make sure they are properly supported and protected in that role, and that is what is going on.

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

18. What steps she is taking to tackle backlogs in the courts.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)]

The last Government left a mess in every single corner of our justice system—our criminal courts and our civil courts. In the process, they let down not just victims of crime but businesses, employees, employers and children in care; every part of our system was left in a complete mess. That is what we are sorting out, with record Crown court sitting days—a commitment of 110,000 sitting days—and running almost to a maximum across all jurisdictions to bring down the backlog. We are sorting out the mess that we were left with.

[Mr Dillon]

I agree with the Minister’s assessment of the previous Conservative Government. However, with more than 382,000 cases still in the backlog for magistrates, have the Government done an assessment of whether that will increase, given the doubled sentencing powers that have been passed down to those courts?

[Sarah Sackman]

The magistrates court is being run in a sustainable way. We extended the sentencing powers in order to free up capacity in the Crown court, and that has been sustainable, and we are increasing capacity in our magistracy by recruiting an additional 2,000 magistrates from diverse backgrounds every year. But that is why we are looking at system reform, whether in the magistrates court or the Crown courts. We are going to need once-in-a-generation reform, and when Sir Brian Leveson reports back, that is what we will get.