Trials: Timeliness

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the basic premise of the noble and learned Lord’s question. It is simply unacceptable, and behind every one of those statistics are human beings waiting for justice. Our immediate reactions are that we intend to fund a record high of 111,250 sitting days in the Crown Court, to free up an additional 2,000 days in the Crown Court by extending the sentencing powers of the magistrates’ courts from six to 12 months, and to make some capital investment. But it is obvious to everybody that simply making efficiencies and putting financial help into the system will not deal with the problem. The backlog is now twice what it was before Covid, which is why the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to look at fundamental reforms of how the system works. We are considering those and will respond in due course.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we all accept that there is no magic bullet to reduce trial delays to acceptable levels, but does the noble Baroness agree that the most important factor is indeed the number of Crown Court sitting days? Unless prosecutions have to be abandoned—which does happen because of delays—all these cases need to be tried eventually, so there is no saving of resources by delaying trials. What steps do the Government have in mind specifically to increase the number of court sitting days much further and so to reduce these shameful court backlogs?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a very important point, and once again I agree with his fundamental premise. The difficulty is that any court in the Crown Court is a complex system. It is not just a room or just a judge; it is also things such as numbers of court staff, advocates and prison cells available in that court system. Currently we are funding 111,250 sitting days, as I said, and the Lady Chief Justice has said the maximum available is 113,000. But that is just rooms and judges, not all the rest of the infrastructure. That is why we are looking at Sir Brian Leveson’s reforms and will respond in due course.