Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the public purse of providing an additional 4,000 court sitting days in the 2024-25 financial year.

I am assuming the Rt. Honourable Gentleman is referring to the Crown Court with his question. The current Lord Chancellor increased the allocation of Crown Court sitting days for the current financial year by 2,500 additional days. This takes the total allocation for FY24/25 to 108,500, the highest number in nearly a decade.

The Government has since announced a record level of investment in our courts for the next financial year. It will fund up to 110,000 sitting days in FY25/26 within a total budget of £2.5 billion - 4,000 more days than the previous Government funded.