Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to tackle backlogs in the Crown Court.

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 also invested a quarter of a billion pounds to support recovery in the last financial year, and this year we will provide over £150.5m for support services for victims and witnesses, rising to over £185m by 2024/25.

We extended 32 Crown Nightingale courtrooms until the end of March 2022, and removed the limit on the number of days the Crown Court can sit this year. Our rapid roll out of video technology, which has equipped 70 per cent of all courtrooms with our Cloud Video Platform, enabled up to 20,000 cases to be heard virtually each week at the height of the pandemic.

These measures are already working – the backlog 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.

We are now extending magistrates’ court sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months for a single Triable Either Way offence. This will provide vital additional capacity in the Crown Courts to drive down the backlog of cases over the coming years and is expected to free up an estimated 1,700 extra days of Crown Court time annually.