Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans her Department has to increase the number of daily sitting hours by Crown Court judges.

There are no current plans to extend the standard sitting hours of the Crown Court.

The Lord Chancellor has a statutory duty to ensure there is an effective and efficient system to support the carrying on of the businesses of the courts, and that appropriate services are provided for those courts.

Alongside this, the way in which an individual sitting day is used with regards to the scheduling and sequencing of cases at the Crown Court is at the discretion of the independent judiciary. In addition to time spent hearing cases in the court room, at either end of the day judges will spend time on other judicial business including reading case files in preparation for the hearing and other aspects of case management. As a result, the hours of a given sitting day can vary from day to day.

We recognise that the Crown Court outstanding caseload remains one of the biggest challenges facing the Criminal Justice System and we are committed to reducing the caseload and bringing waiting times down.

This Government has increased the number of Crown Court sitting days to 106,500, more than in six out of the last seven years. And we will soon extend magistrates’ sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months, freeing up 2,000 days in the Crown Courts to handle the most serious cases.

Alongside this, we invest consistently in the recruitment of c.1,000 judges and tribunal members across all jurisdictions annually. Crown Court recruitment has been a particular priority and we have successfully increased the number of Circuit judges and Recorders in recent years.