Criminal Court Reform

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her observations, which echoed what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said. I did my best to try to keep this non-partisan as far as possible until provoked into it by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie. It is true that Covid had an effect on the backlog, but that is not the only element; a lot of it is due to the cuts in the criminal justice system. For example, one of the questions that I am sure somebody will ask me at some point is why we simply do not open up all the unused courtrooms. The reason is that a court is much more than just a room. It is staffed by a lot of people, which includes the barristers and the solicitors, and we do not have enough criminal barristers any more because of the cuts to legal aid—about which the party opposite was warned at the time they made them. That is why we are going to increase funding for legal aid and the match funding for pupillages to try to grow back up that venerable body of practitioners. I will not comment on individual cases or categories of cases; this is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement and I welcome almost everything in it. I wanted to raise one point which I am less happy about. Brian Leveson recommended for the Crown Court Bench Division that it should be a judge and two magistrates but the Statement said it would be a judge sitting alone. Brian Leveson in his review was very clear why he thought magistrates should be involved in the Crown Court Bench Division. First, it retains an element of community involvement and the judgment of one’s peers, by the lay magistrates sitting with the judge, and one could argue that three heads are better than one. Secondly, there is greater diversity within the magistrate cohort than there is within the judge cohort, so that would go some way to creating diversity within the three people sitting making those judgments. The third point which Brian Leveson made was on the safety of the judge sitting alone. It is safer if there are three people making that decision, because there is not a single identified decision-maker. Since we are all concerned about the safety of judges, that was a factor in keeping the decision-making for three individuals in the new Crown Court Bench Division. Will my noble friend keep an open mind about adopting the recommendations of Sir Leveson?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend very much for the question he raises. It is an important point and I am sure the rest of your Lordships’ House will want to pay tribute to my noble friend for the work that he did when standing where I am now, as well as for his long service as a magistrate. He speaks from great experience.

There are two reasons why the Crown Court Bench Division will not include lay justices. The first, as my noble friend will know, is that we do not have enough to staff that at the moment. We have enough justices to run the magistrates’ court and make sure that we do not then end up with a lot of backlogs there. We are running a recruitment programme and hope to recruit 2,000 more, but, at present, we do not have sufficient numbers. The second reason is about speeding up the process. Any judge who has sat on an appeal from the magistrates’ court always sits with two lay justices. It takes a lot longer because of the fact that consultation is required, whereas the point here is to make things faster and quicker. For those reasons, we are not going to adopt that recommendation of Sir Brian—and they are principled reasons.

As for the perfectly proper point about diversity, the judiciary is becoming more diverse. It is not where we want it to be but it is getting there. What it does have is extensive training in matters to do with issues of diversity, fairness and disproportionate impacts on particular sectors of the population. We do not really know what juries think about this because they do not have that kind of training, but we are satisfied that those issues can be dealt with within what is proposed.