Courts and Tribunals: Recovery

Debate between Robert Buckland and Elliot Colburn

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

We are acting. The second phase of the criminal legal aid review will be announced shortly, and the independent review can get on with its important work. I am acutely aware of the issues with regard to criminal defence solicitors—the problem predates 2010, I am afraid to tell the hon. Gentleman—but I want to ensure that we have a viable market and that solicitors and barristers are paid properly for the actual work that they are doing. That is why we need an update in the system.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend will have heard me speak before about the Chris Donovan Trust and its amazing work in Carshalton and Wallington and elsewhere to encourage restorative justice, after Ray and Vi Donovan met their son Chris’s killers. Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that, as we tackle the backlog in cases, restorative justice is offered as a matter of routine throughout the justice process?

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to the Donovan Trust and my hon. Friend’s work with it. I am a big supporter of restorative justice, but it needs to be victim-led. It is important that any decisions with regard to it very much involve the victims first, rather than it becoming some sort of pro forma, which would be a negation of what restorative justice should be about. It needs to be meaningful, and that is what I believe will continue to happen right through this crisis and beyond.