Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Buckland and Matt Western

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

  According to solicitors in Warwick and Leamington, the court system dealing with criminals is at breaking point. They see it as being completely chaotic. I appreciate that in the spending review the Government have announced additional money—£337 million—but the Law Society is calling for more. Will the Government actually accept what the Law Society is calling for and give additional funding to break the backlog?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that both the Law Society and the Bar Council agree that this year’s settlement was encouraging. Of course, it is not the end of the story, and I have talked about us beginning to turn a corner. The good news in the magistrates courts is that receipts are now behind disposals, so we are dealing with the overall number of cases in the magistrates system. In the Crown court, we continue to scale up the number of trials being heard. In fact, in the past week or so, I have been looking at figures of effective trials, crack trials and trials that have been dealt with by way of a guilty plea: the numbers are now in the high 300s. We need to get that up, and I am confident that we can do that in the new year to return us to the pre-covid levels, and then work even harder.