Crown Court Criminal Case Backlog

Lord Burnett of Maldon Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, on her instructive maiden speech.

The outstanding case load in the Crown Court has reached a level that is irretrievable without a radical change to the way in which many Crown Court trials are conducted. I will repeat just a few figures. In January 2019, the outstanding case load was 33,000; it rose to 40,000 as Covid lockdown engulfed us in 2020, and by the end of September 2024, it was over 73,000. The December figure will soon be published by the Ministry of Justice, and there is no doubt that it will be significantly higher. The backlog continues to grow because the volume of cases coming into the system has greatly increased, and there is no sign of that volume diminishing. The proportion of cases taking more than a year to conclude in the Crown Court has roughly doubled over the same period.

All those involved in the system are working hard to iron out problems that result in too many hearings, ineffective trials or late guilty pleas—and much else that has been referred to. I am afraid that those changes and improvements will not solve the problem, but they would help. Similarly, extra sitting days would not solve the problem but would help.

There is an obvious solution, and in this I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who must be congratulated on securing this debate. A substantial proportion of cases that can be tried either in the magistrates’ court or in the Crown Court, but which currently go to the Crown Court, should be decided in that court by the same composition that deals with appeals from the magistrates’ court—a judge and two magistrates. Obvious cases for such trials would be all offences that carry a maximum of two years’ imprisonment. It is the accident of the maximum sentence that enables a defendant to elect for jury trial.

Many other cases—including drugs offences, criminal damage, regulatory offences and others where, on conviction, the sentence would inevitably be non-custodial or a short term of imprisonment—might also be considered for such trials. Such trials would take hours rather than a couple of days, because that is how long they take in the magistrates’ court. Perhaps more importantly, many of the tactical not guilty pleas that are entered in the Crown Court at the moment would evaporate.

The limit on these speeches today, which I notice I have reached, makes it impossible to develop the arguments or deal with the reasoned arguments in opposition. But, having pondered this question for some time, I note that this solution, first mooted 25 years ago by Sir Robin Auld, stands a good chance of reversing what is otherwise an inexorable decline.