Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to Q3 of the oral evidence given by the Lady Chief Justice of England to the Justice Select Committee on 26 November 2024, HC 421, what estimate she has made of the total cost of sitting the extra 6,500 court sitting days to reach the maximum 113,000 days available.

113,000 sitting days are a theoretical maximum of judicial sitting days in the Crown Court. It is not clear whether other parts of the system – for example the availability of counsel - could sustain that level of sitting, and therefore it is not correct to say that number of sitting days was 'available' for FY24/25.

In June the previous Lord Chancellor reached agreement with the Lady Chief Justice and Senior President of Tribunals to sit 106,000 days in the Crown Court in FY24/25 within a total budget of £275 million. In September, the current Lord Chancellor increased the allocation of sitting days for the Crown Court by 500 additional days and then again in December by 2,000, meaning that the total allocation for FY 24/25 is now 108,500, the highest number in nearly a decade.