Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the number of cases due to be affected by the decision to allow pending cases to be tried by a judge alone.

The Ministry of Justice has published information about the impacts of the IRCC measures in the Courts and Tribunals Bill, in the IRCC Impact Assessment (Courts and Tribunals Bill (Structural Criminal Court) Impact Assessment). This includes the impacts of re-allocating cases in the open caseload to the Crown Court Bench Division and judge-alone trials for technical and lengthy cases.

The package of measures is estimated to reduce incoming demand on the Crown Court by the equivalent of around 27,000 sitting days in 2028/29. These changes are annual and continue into future years. In 2028/29 a further one-off gain of c. 3,500 Crown Court sitting days will accrue from changing mode of trial on cases already in the Crown Court open caseload from jury trial to trial by judge alone (either under the Crown Court Bench Division or on grounds of technicality or length). The modelling of this gain takes into account the time needed to review open cases when re-allocating cases.