Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

What plans he has to tackle the backlog of court and tribunal cases.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to reduce the backlog of court cases.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Philp)]

Prior to coronavirus, outstanding case loads in the Crown court were low by historical standards. However, coronavirus has put huge strain on the court system, in common with so many other public services. The Government have taken decisive action, with 60 Nightingale courtrooms, a quarter of a billion pounds spent on improving the justice system, 290 safe jury trial rooms and 1,600 extra staff. It is thanks to those decisive measures that magistrates court case loads are now 60,000 cases lower than they were at the peak over the summer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Evans [V]]

I asked the House of Commons Library what was going on in the east midlands pre-pandemic. Interestingly, in Bosworth the number of court cases in the backlog has stayed the same. That is partly because there was an 11% rise in Leicester courts, but a 12% fall in Leamington Spa. Clearly, covid has had a massive impact and I pay tribute to the court staff working tirelessly to clear that, but overall there is a mixed picture. What is the Minister’s Department trying to do to tease out what is covid and what is pre-existing, and, most importantly, to share good practice to try to deal with all those cases?

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his interest, of course, in his constituency and his region. There is a great deal we are doing across the country, including in the east midlands. I mentioned the investment of a quarter of a billion pounds. We are also saying that for Crown court cases there will be no constraint on the number of cases listed. We are encouraging the judiciary the length and breadth of the kingdom, including in the east midlands, to be forward-leaning in listing. We have, of course, already opened the Nightingale court in Nottingham and are planning to open a further Crown court in Loughborough in the late summer, which will accommodate large multi-handers—it will be a supercourt. I hope my hon. Friend will welcome that important step, which will benefit his region.

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[Robert Buckland]

With respect to the hon. Lady, I think that her concerns are wholly misplaced; I would be kind enough to say that. Some of the objection to this is, frankly, synthetic. The last Labour Government introduced it in Northern Ireland in 2003 without any concomitant reduction in turnout. Countries such as France and Canada and other mature democracies have long had this system in place. We will provide free identification for the tiny minority of people who do not have it. Frankly, the people of this country are wondering why on earth this has not been done before and are bewildered by the Opposition’s confected objections.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) [V]]

  I met with TSB last week to discuss fraud and was surprised to find out that there has been a big increase in young people being subject to fraud. TSB’s internal research showed that over 50% of these scams and frauds directly involved social media. What does my hon. Friend believe should be done about that, and what conversations are taking place with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to develop ways to clamp down on this in the light of the online harms Bill?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend rightly identifies an expanding area of business, sadly, for the courts and the police. He will be pleased to know that just last week, I held a meeting with the National Economic Crime Centre at the National Crime Agency to talk specifically about this issue. He will understand the complexity of online fraud in particular, whereby the offender may well be overseas, laundering money through a third territory and banking it in a fourth. Nevertheless, we need to do more to increase our capacity and capability to tackle this issue, to which we are all, including me, subject.