Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on capacity in the criminal justice system. When this Government came to power, we inherited prisons on the brink of disaster, moments from total collapse. Had that happened, the consequences would have been apocalyptic: courts would have been forced to cancel all trials, the police would have been barred from making arrests, and we would have faced the total breakdown of law and order.

The last Government knew what had to be done. My predecessor, the former Lord Chancellor, begged his Prime Minister to act, but rather than have the bravery to do so, the now Leader of the Opposition chose to call an election instead. As a result, it fell to this Government to take the necessary but difficult action. While they say that to govern is to choose, my predecessors left me with no choice at all.

On 18 July, just two weeks into the job, I announced to this House that we had been forced to bring forward the release dates of some prisoners serving standard determinate sentences from 50% of time served in prison to 40%, serving the rest on their sentence on licence in the community. Make no mistake: the action we took prevented the immediate collapse of law and order in our country, but with our prison population still rising fast, there is more that we must do to address the capacity challenges our prisons face, and our task now is to ensure that a crisis like the one we inherited can never happen again.

Today, I can set out a measure that will begin to address a specific and acute cause of our prisons capacity crisis: the remand population. As this House will know, prisoners on remand are in our jails but have not yet been tried or sentenced. Because of the historical backlog in our Crown courts—another element of the woeful inheritance my predecessors handed to me—the remand population in prisons has soared. Today, it stands at a record 17,000, which is nearly one in every five prisoners. As some Members will know, remand prisoners are an especially acute problem as they are placed in so-called reception or category B prisons. Until they are tried and sentenced, they cannot be moved elsewhere in the estate. It is in our reception prisons that we face the most acute capacity pressure in the country. Unless we address our remand population, we could still see a collapse of the system, not because of a lack of cells, but because we do not have those cells in the places we need them. It is therefore crucial that we bear down on the remand population.

Magistrates courts have sentencing powers for only up to six months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence, and only the Crown court can hand down sentences beyond that. Between May 2022 and March 2023, the previous Government chose to extend magistrates court sentencing powers to 12 months. This enabled magistrates courts to retain more sentencing hearings and meant that they were heard more quickly. It also freed up capacity in the Crown court to hear more complex cases. However, magistrates’ sentencing powers were then reduced back to six months when, having failed to address the capacity crisis in our prisons, the pressure on prison places became too great.

This Government have now acted to relieve that pressure, so I can announce that we will extend magistrates’ sentencing powers back to 12 months’ imprisonment. On 28 October, I will lay a statutory instrument to that effect, which will come into force on 18 November this year. This change does not increase the maximum sentence for specific offences, and nor does it change the length of sentence that a defendant will serve. Instead, it expands which courts can hand down sentences of six to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence. It will enable the system to make more use of magistrates, who are an integral part of our court system, delivering justice swiftly across the country.

This measure will also allow us to begin to address the remand problem in our prisons, but it will do more than that. This Government inherited a record Crown court backlog. Waits for trials have grown so long that some cases are not heard for years. The impact on victims of crime is profound. For some, justice delayed is, as the old saying goes, justice denied, as victims choose to withdraw from the justice process altogether rather than face the pain of a protracted legal battle. By extending magistrates’ powers, we will be able to make progress on addressing the Crown court backlog, and we will free the Crown court to take on more of the cases that only it can hear. This measure is expected to free up an equivalent of 2,000 sitting days within the Crown court each year, which will add capacity on top of the additional 500 sitting days that this Government funded on taking office.

This measure will, in total, see a slight increase in the overall prison population, but by bearing down on the remand population in our reception prisons, we will create capacity where we need it most. This measure allows us to manage our prison population smartly, and it means we can both address our prisons crisis and tackle the courts backlog.

When this Government came to power, we inherited a justice system in crisis. We took immediate action to avert a total breakdown of law and order. We are now beginning the work of ensuring that this country never faces this crisis again. There will be more that we must do. In the coming weeks, I will return to the House and set out our long-term plan for the justice system, but these new powers for magistrates mark an important step. They help us alleviate the capacity pressures caused by the historical remand population that we inherited, and begin to address the record Crown court backlog that my predecessors handed to me. In so doing, for victims across the country they will make justice swifter, and ensure that more criminals receive the punishment that they deserve. I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is almost as if the shadow Lord Chancellor was not, in fact, a Minister in the Ministry of Justice just a few short months ago. Let me remind him of a few salient facts. First, on Crown court sitting days, I will not accept any suggestion or allegation from him that this Government have cut sitting days or trials in the Crown court. That is entirely untrue. As he knows, or ought to know, perfectly well—I am sure he can check with the former Lord Chancellor—on 28 June, the last Government and the last Lord Chancellor determined how many days the judges could sit this year. Since then, this Government have increased the number of sitting days by 500. As there is clearly some confusion here, it is important that I set the record straight.

Every year, the Government and the judiciary agree a number of sitting days, and an overall budget to fund those sitting days, in what is known as the concordat process. In June, the judiciary reached an agreement with the former Lord Chancellor to sit 106,000 days in the Crown court, with a total budget of £275 million. It has become clear that there has been over-listing against that budget, with more trials scheduled than the funding allowed for. As a result, some cases have had to be delisted, although far fewer than some recent reporting has suggested—it was claimed that around 5,000 sitting days were being cancelled, and I know that the shadow Lord Chancellor had some other numbers in his remarks. In fact, as I understand it, the number is more like 1,600 sitting days. Although misleading reports have abounded, one thing is clear: the concordat process has not worked as it should. I can assure the House that the first concordat process on my watch will be very different, and such confusions will not occur again.

The shadow Lord Chancellor asked a number of questions relating to the impact assessment for the changes announced today. I will publish all the usual impact assessments when the statutory instrument is published. As I said in my opening remarks, we expect an initial impact on prison places, but over time we expect that to come down. We have a little more space in prisons because of the action we have taken to stabilise the pressure on prison places. It is a sensible measure to then take the opportunity to bear down on the Crown court backlog by providing the extra 2,000 sitting days that this change will allow, while also bearing down further on our remand population.

As the shadow Lord Chancellor will know, the exact numbers are difficult to model because listing is a matter for the judiciary. Some of those on remand will ultimately be found not guilty and some will be found guilty and sentenced, and the whole range of sentencing measures is available to the independent judiciary. But we expect to make some progress on the remand population and, crucially, to be able to move people from the reception estate into the rest of the prison estate, thereby helping us to make sure we have the prison places where we need them. I can also confirm that all of the 37 people released in error because of being incorrectly sentenced are now back in custody.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

As someone who spent a decade shadowing and scrutinising the previous Government’s justice policies, I sympathise with the Lord Chancellor over the chaos she has inherited, but the proposed changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers may have mixed results. They should ease the backlog in the Crown court, but they may put additional pressure on our overcrowded prisons. My concern is that we do not have robust data on the Crown court backlog or on the effects of varying sentencing. The Government are about to embark on a quick but thorough review of sentencing. Will they use that opportunity to get the policy and the figures lined up?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think this is my first chance in the House to welcome my hon. Friend to his new position as Chair of the Justice Committee. Let me deal with Crown court data first. In fairness to the previous Government, they discovered this error prior to the conclusion of their term in office. When I came in, I was made aware of the issue with Crown court data. I ordered further investigation and examination of the issues. It is clear that a number of problems with the data—a number of errors and other issues—need to be resolved. We will make sure that it is published when we can be sure that it is accurate and that all those errors have been finally resolved.

Clearly, the situation is unacceptable. I am in discussion with the Lady Chief Justice about the need for a full external audit of Crown court data, because I think we can all agree that that data must be accurate. We clearly must do more to restore confidence in the reporting process, and I will update the House further in due course.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. So many of my constituents are appalled by the state in which the Conservatives have left our justice system: huge court backlogs, a woefully big remand population, overcrowded prisons and so many victims and survivors without justice. I therefore welcome her determination to arrest this problem and this decline, and especially the reports of her correspondence with the Prime Minister over a fully funded Ministry of Justice. However, I want to address some of the Liberal Democrats’ key concerns about some of the proposals that she has set out.

First, the Secretary of State recognised that there may be additional issues with prison capacity in the short term. With the system bursting at the seams and with us, a matter of weeks ago, just 100 men away from the prisons being completely full, how will she prevent our prisons from collapsing as a result of these measures?

Secondly, on prison effectiveness, putting too many eggs in the prisons basket will ultimately fail to keep our communities safe. We know that 75% of ex-offenders go on to reoffend within nine years of being released. From the work I did before I arrived in this place on getting kids out of crime and out of gangs, I know that rehabilitation, done holistically, is a critical way of reducing reoffending and victimhood. How will the Secretary of State double down on rehabilitation and through-the-gate mentoring programmes to reduce offending?

Thirdly, these measures will put more pressure on magistrates courts, at a time when many, such as my own in Eastbourne, have closed. That risks forcing victims of crimes currently heard in those courts to wait even longer for justice. How will the Secretary of State address that risk?

Finally, one of the worst Justice Secretaries in recent memory, Dominic Raab, tried a similar policy in 2022, with magistrates increasing the number of people being sent to prison on short sentences. The scheme was dropped after a year, and short-sentence reoffending rates are at 57%, which is a deplorable number. How will the Secretary of State avoid these measures backfiring in a similar way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Just for reference, your questions should be two minutes, no longer.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his questions. I am very aware of the number of places in our prison estate, and we had a particularly difficult moment before the last bank holiday, in August, when we came down to fewer than 100. However, as a result of the measures we have taken on SDS40, there is now some space and some capacity in our prison system. It is important that we use this opportunity also to bear down on the remand population and to deal with the Crown court backlog.

This is a delicate balancing exercise, and it is one that I will personally be keeping a close eye on and keeping under review. However, I think that the measure we have announced is ultimately the right one, because it helps us with our prison capacity challenges. As a result, we will have the prison places where we need them—in the reception prisons—and we can start moving people out to other parts of the estate, which is not possible until cases are heard. I am confident that we have the capacity in the magistrates courts to deal with the additional workload. Again, I will be keeping that under review.

The hon. Member is right: 80% of offenders are actually reoffenders. This country has a real problem with failing to rehabilitate offenders, and our record on reducing reoffending is not as strong as it should be. Prison has a place, and it is really important that people who break our laws are properly punished. That is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in our system and for law-abiding citizens to feel that there are consequences when our laws are broken. There is no doubt in my mind that punishment and prison are important, but they go hand in hand with rehabilitation. I do not think there is a choice to be made between punishment and rehabilitation—they are two sides of the same coin, and we have to have both. This Government are determined to have a better track record on both punishment and rehabilitation compared with anything that has gone on in the previous 14 years.

Let me gently say that it is not the case that magistrates courts send more people to prison. Following the previous change the courts were able to run through cases faster, and because the previous Government had not created capacity in the prison estate, the pressure on prison places became acute and the measure had to be dropped back to six months—the shadow Lord Chancellor might wish to offer further comments on that. That is what happened and what I expect to happen again.