Judicial Review and Courts Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I give way to my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

[Neil Parish]

I seek reassurance from my hon. Friend that this measure will speed up the process, so that we will see more people being brought to justice, and also more people getting their cases heard, so that justice is done.

[James Cartlidge]

I will explain very shortly what impact we expect this to have on the delays, which my hon. Friend is quite right to raise.

Just to be clear, in the coming months, we will be extending magistrates court’s sentencing powers from a maximum of six months to 12 months imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence by commencing existing provisions in the Sentencing Act 2020 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Extended sentencing powers will allow for more cases to be retained in magistrates courts, allowing these cases to be heard more quickly and with the intended effect of reducing the backlog of outstanding cases in the Crown court. Just to be clear, we estimate that this will save nearly 2,000 Crown court sitting days per year. Magistrates are also fully capable of hearing these cases. They make sound legal decisions, which is supported by the fact that there is very low appeal rate of only 0.7%, 50% of which are dismissed or abandoned.