Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has made a recent assessment of scale of backlog in London courts; and whether he has plans to further increase courtroom use and Judicial capacity.

The department regularly publishes data on outstanding caseloads, which can be found here for the criminal courts (Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly: July to September 2021) and here for Civil and Family courts (Family Court Statistics Quarterly: July to September 2021 and Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly: July to September 2021).

We have allocated over a quarter of a billion pounds on recovery in the last financial year (20/21), making court buildings safe, rolling out new technology for remote hearings, recruiting additional staff and opening Nightingale courtrooms, including London’s fifth Nightingale courtroom at Monument in September. 32 Crown Court Nightingales have been extended to the end of March 2022.

We have undertaken one of our most ambitious programmes of judicial recruitment ever, so that we can hear as many cases as possible. We have also made greater use of part-time judges by lifting the number of days fee-paid judges can sit from 30 days to 80 for the second year in a row. The Spending Review will provide additional funding to recover performance following the pandemic.

We are now focused both on increasing capacity of the criminal courts and using the capacity we have in high-demand areas to its maximum. The Department continues to work with the judiciary to enable movement of additional judicial capacity into the London Crown Courts from other Regions, and where appropriate and agreed by all parties to move some Crown Court cases out of London into the South East and South West Crown Courts.