Oral Answers to Questions

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I congratulate her on championing those issues. Many hon. Members raise their harrowing cases of serious road traffic incidents at Justice questions. In addition to the increase from 14 years to life for the offences I referred to, in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, we are also creating a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving. In Government amendments, we will increase from two years to five years the minimum period of disqualification from driving for offenders convicted of causing death by dangerous driving or causing death by careless driving when under the influence of drink or drugs. That sends a strong signal that we want to put victims first, which is why we are bringing forward those changes.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

16. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the backlog of cases in the court system.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

20. What estimate he has made of the length of time required to clear the backlog of Crown court cases resulting from the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)]

We are already seeing the results of our efforts to tackle the impact of the pandemic on our justice system. Outstanding cases in magistrates courts are falling and are close to recovering to pre-pandemic levels. In the Crown court, the backlog is stabilising. The spending review provides an extra £477 million for the criminal justice system, which will allow us to reduce Crown court backlogs caused by the pandemic from about 60,000 today to an estimated 53,000 by March 2025.

[Mrs Murray]

What steps is my hon. Friend taking to ensure that evidence is not compromised by the passage of time if there is a delay?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Since 2000, outstanding cases in the Crown court have never been below 30,000, so it is inherent in the criminal justice system that some cases take time. It is important that we consider how to preserve evidence and section 28 is a key part of that. Since November 2020, vulnerable witnesses have had the option to pre-record cross-examination evidence in advance of a trial. In September, we extended the pilot to allow intimidated witnesses to pre-record their cross-examination evidence to a further four Crown courts. We recently set out that we want to go much further and roll it out to all Crown courts.