Courts and Tribunals Bill

Debate between Neil Shastri-Hurst and Karl Turner

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am a member of the Bar of England and Wales, and my wife is an employment judge. Notwithstanding some noble and commendable elements, particularly in clauses 12 to 17, in totality, I am afraid that this is a bad Bill. It was a bad Bill when it came before the House on Second Reading; it was a bad Bill when it left Committee; and without significant refinement, it will be a bad piece of law, should it come on to the statute books.

This is not the Lord Chancellor’s legislation; he inherited it from his predecessor. It is right to welcome his efforts on the amendment that recognises that clause 3 is unsustainable; it would be churlish not to. He has listened to the legal profession, to this House, and most importantly, to the public, who have raised serious and significant concerns. But I am afraid that the measures do not go far enough. If this Bill is the answer, then the exam question is fundamentally wrong. Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in clause 6. That is why I am very supportive of amendment 7 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), which seeks to remove clause 6.

The clause, as we have heard, merely moves the problem from one part of the system to another. It pushes, on a conservative basis, some 25,000 cases into the magistrates court. About 5,500 of those are likely to be trials—and not necessarily straightforward trials; they may take more than a day or two to be heard. We are asking an under-resourced and ill equipped magistrates court to deal with them. That is not the way to deal with the magistrates court backlog, which, in the last year, increased by more than 9.5%.

[Karl Turner]

I think I am right in saying that a lay magistrate is required to sit 15 days a year. Very often, magistrates sit for a day at a time; they may do a day every other week. The scenario that the Government are presenting expects a lay magistrate to sit for two or three days in a row, and potentially into a second week. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is unsustainable?

[Dr Shastri-Hurst]

The hon. Gentleman, as always, has his finger on the pulse on these issues. The Government’s proposals would narrow the pool of magistrates able to deal with these cases, by virtue of the time commitments that would be foisted on them.

I want to spend a little bit of time on clause 4, which deals with complex and lengthy cases. In essence, through new schedule 3ZA to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the clause confines complex and lengthy cases to fraud or fraud-aligned cases. However, importantly, there is a provision that the Secretary of State can increase the number of offences captured in this provision. The danger is that there will be a slow accretion of such offences. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that misconduct in public office could be added to that list. The provision fails to recognise the very important work done by Jonathan Fisher KC in his independent review. He pointed out that these cases are not held up because of a jury; under the Bill, they would be delayed, because a judge would have to weigh up the evidence, and reach and write up a judgment. The provision also fundamentally undermines the point that facts of dishonesty—the offences in the schedule are offences around dishonesty—are matters for judgment by the ordinary citizen. Removing the jury element risks the erosion of civic ownership of these cases by the criminal justice system, and the criminal justice system’s engagement with them.

The provision would also have a chilling effect, in that the powerful narrative can be developed that these cases are being heard behind closed doors. This stems from a single case from 2005, the Jubilee line case. When the case was reviewed, the very sensible conclusion was reached that the issue came down to poor strategy by the CPS in processing the case; the issue was not jury trials themselves. Amendment 4 from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle is therefore eminently sensible.

If the House is not with me on that, there is an alternative. Amendment 52 by the shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), seeks to limit the scope of this provision to trials where all the offences that a defendant is charged with are captured by new schedule 3ZA. That seems eminently sensible in the circumstances.

I want to mention the rule of law. If the rule of law is to be taken into account, we must have an impartial system of adjudication. That means having a fair hearing, which in turn means having the ability to challenge. Therefore, amendment 54 must be right. It must be right that in complex or lengthy cases, a defendant has an opportunity to challenge the decision that the case will be heard by a judge sitting alone.

I want to spend a few moments on new clause 25. When this Bill was brought before the House, the narrative that we heard from Government repeatedly was that it was being introduced so that we could deal with a backlog in the Crown court. It appears from the Minister’s remarks—she knows that I have enormous respect for her—that it is more of an ideological argument. The question today is whether hon. Members want to do this to deal with a backlog—a specific problem—in which case a sunset clause would be eminently sensible, or whether they are making an ideological argument, which I think is much more chilling on our society.