Courts and Tribunals Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

We have, of course, accepted the thrust of Sir Brian’s recommendations, but there are areas in which we have chosen to go further—the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right about that—because of the modelling, and what it says the effect on the backlog will be. He will recognise, when presented with the evidence, that the backlog would be heading to 200,000 by 2035—notwithstanding all that has been said about investment, which we are putting in, and notwithstanding all that has been said about modernisation and the efficiencies about which Sir Brian went into such detail in part 2 of his review—because, with all good will, the reform proposed in the Bill will not get through this Parliament until towards the end of the year, we felt that there were some areas in which we wanted to go further.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Lammy]

I will, and then I will make some progress.

[Ms Creasy]

I think we all share my right hon. Friend’s passionate desire to support the victims who are waiting too long to get to court, but that means that we also owe them a debt of truth. The concern highlighted in the Institute for Government report is that magistrates courts will struggle to absorb such a large increase in demand, so we may not see the faster justice that he is promising under these proposals. Will he recognise that those of us who cannot support the Bill as it currently stands think that the way forward is to look at the data and consider whether juries are actually a red herring when it comes to the investment that we so sorely need because of the damage done by the previous Government?

[Mr Lammy]

That is why we have uncapped sitting days for the Crown Court, and that is why I am proposing further investment in our magistrates. I want to get the number of magistrates back to more or less where it was when the Labour party was last in government. It was 29,000 then, and it dropped to 21,000 under the previous Government. My hon. Friend is right—we will have to invest, and increase the number of magistrates—but I hope that, given her long-standing record of working with victims in particular, she will look hard at the Bill as it continues its passage, and will ultimately feel able to support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Creasy]

I know at first hand the strength that my hon. Friend is showing in making this speech, and I know why it matters for us to be confident that what we bring forward actually will change this situation—that we will not go down rabbit holes and be distracted by changing juries, but will focus ruthlessly on the victim’s experience. I want to speak on behalf of everyone in the Chamber in saying that we are with my hon. Friend every step of the way, and we are so damn proud of her today.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank my hon. Friend.

The third thing to say is that, for me, closure began after a successful civil process following the acquittal. My rapist may not be considered to have met the criminal threshold for guilt beyond all reasonable doubt, and is out there on the streets as a free man while I live with the life sentence of what he did to me, but what has been established, at a civil standard of proof, is what happened. It found that I had been raped, and a compensation order was made that recognises me as the blameless victim of a violent crime.

Despite the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, we are still nowhere on civil remedy, including movement on the criminal injuries compensation scheme reform. Shamefully, the tariffs have not been uprated in line with inflation since 2012 and have no eligibility for non-contact sexual offences, which can cause significant and lasting harm.

Finally, the VAWG sector has been under-invested in for such a significant period that the best things that we can do to drive down waiting times and improve the experience of victims require money, and the Treasury remains unwilling to adequately cough up. I welcome the announcement of independent legal advisers, but the £6 million that sits alongside this is woefully inadequate. I could not have made it all the way to trial without my independent sexual violence adviser, Jaz, whose support saved my life, but I had to wait seven months to be allocated one, given how under-resourced the system is. That is not good enough.

I have enormous respect for many of my Front-Bench colleagues, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) and for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), but from where I am sitting it feels that, despite their best efforts and the publication of our groundbreaking VAWG strategy, we could do so much for rape victims that does not involve the Lord Chancellor using them as a cudgel to drive through reforms that are not directly relevant to them. As a starting point, Rape Crisis England & Wales has called for five key demands in its “Living in Limbo” report. Do not say that this Bill helps deliver justice for rape victims until it actually, materially does.