Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to ensure the availability of specialist domestic violence courts as part of tackling the backlog of cases in courts.

Since January 2019, all magistrates’ courts across England and Wales are required to follow a Domestic Abuse Best Practice Framework which introduced consistent expectations on all cross-agency specialists and a requirement that they work together to enhance the service, support and experience of those involved in domestic abuse cases.

Our action to reduce the backlog across magistrates more broadly will ensure that domestic violence cases will continue to be heard in a consistent and supported way. As part of the Spending Review, we announced that we will be investing £477 million in the Criminal Justice System over the next three years to help reduce the backlog and deliver the swift access to justice that victims deserve.

We invested a quarter of a billion pounds to support court recovery across all jurisdictions in the last financial year (20/21), opening Nightingale Courts, lifting restrictions on sitting days and increasing the roll-out of remote hearings where suitable. This investment will benefit users throughout the court system.

This year (21/22) we have provided over £150 million for support services for victims and witnesses, rising to over £185 million by 2024/25. This will fund more than 1,000 Independent Sexual and Domestic Violence Advisors and 24/7 crisis helplines and is an 85% increase on funding in 2019/20.

We are seeing the positive impact of this investment in reducing the court backlog; the caseload in the Crown Court has reduced from around 61,000 cases in June 2021 to around 58,700 cases at the end of November 2021.