With your permission, Mr Speaker I will make a statement on criminal court reform.
As the House is aware, the first part of the independent review of criminal courts was published in July. I am grateful to its chair, Sir Brian Leveson—one of the foremost judges of his generation—and to his expert advisers, Professor David Ormerod, Chris Mayer and Shaun McNally. In this review, Sir Brian has produced a blueprint for once-in-a-generation court reform. That is desperately needed, because the Government inherited an emergency in our courts: a record and rising backlog currently at 78,000 cases, and victims face agonising delays, with some trials not listed for years. All the while, defendants bide their time. The guilty plea rate has decreased every year since the year 2000. In the year to June, 11,000 cases were dropped after a charge because victims no longer supported or felt they could support the case.
Behind the statistics are real people. Katie was repeatedly abused by her partner. She reported him to the police in 2017, but then had an unbearable six-year wait for justice. During that time, she lost a job because her mental health deteriorated. She became increasingly isolated, lived in fear and lost faith in the court system. That is not isolated; it is systemic.
We are all proud of our justice system, rooted in Magna Carta, but we must never forget that it implores us not to “deny or delay right or justice.”
When victims are left waiting for years, justice is effectively denied to them. That is a betrayal of our legal heritage and of victims themselves. Some will ask why we do not simply increase funding. This Government have already invested heavily in the courts, including nearly £150 million to make them fit for purpose, a commitment of £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitors, and funding for a record number of sitting days in our Crown courts—5,000 more than those funded last year by the previous Government.
Today, I can announce up to £34 million per year in additional funding for criminal legal aid advocates, to recognise the vital support that they give to those navigating the system. I will also accept Sir Brian’s recommendation to match-fund a number of pupillages in criminal law, to open a career at the Criminal Bar to more young people from across society. I will also negotiate sitting days with the senior judiciary through the usual concordat process, aiming to give an unprecedented three-year certainty to the system. I am clear that sitting days in the Crown and magistrates courts must continue to rise, and my ambition is to continue breaking records by the end of this Parliament.
However, as Sir Brian has made clear, investment is not enough. The case load is projected to reach 100,000 cases by 2028, and without fundamental change it could keep rising, meaning that justice will be denied to more victims and trust in the system will collapse. To avoid that disaster, I will follow Sir Brian’s bold blueprint for change.
First, I will create new “swift courts” within the Crown court, with a judge alone deciding verdicts in triable either-way cases with a likely sentence of three years or less, as Sir Brian recommends. Sir Brian estimates that they will deliver justice at least 20% faster than jury trials. While juries’ deliberations remain confidential, judges provide reasoning for their verdicts in open court, so this will hardwire transparency into our new approach.
Sir Brian also proposes restricting defendants’ right to elect for jury trials—a practice not found widely in other common law jurisdictions, and let us be honest: it is a peculiar way to run a public service. Our world-leading judges should hear the most serious cases, and I agree that they and the magistracy should decide where a case is heard. That will prevent defendants from gaming the system, choosing whichever court they think gives the best chance of success and drawing out the process, hoping victims give up. I will limit appeals from the magistrates courts, so that they are only allowed on points of law, to prevent justice from being delayed further.
Alongside those changes, we will increase magistrates court sentencing powers to 18 months, so that they can take on a greater proportion of lower-level offending and relieve pressure on the Crown court. I will also take a power to extend that to two years, should it become necessary to relieve further pressure. When it comes to exceptionally technical and lengthy fraud and financial trials, judges will be able to sit without a jury where appropriate. While those cases are small in number, they place undue pressure on jurors to sit for months—a significant interference with their personal and professional lives.
These reforms are bold, but they are necessary. I am clear that jury trials will continue to be the cornerstone of the system for the most serious offences—those likely to receive a sentence of over three years and all indictable-only offences. Among others, that will include rape, murder, manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, robbery and arson with intent to kill.
I would like to clear up some misconceptions that colleagues unfamiliar with this area might hold. In England and Wales, magistrates have long done the vast majority of criminal cases. That was true in the Victorian era, right through to Winston Churchill’s time, and today magistrates hear about 90% of criminal cases. In fact, only 3% of trial cases in England and Wales will ever go before a jury, and almost three quarters of all trials going to the Crown court will continue to be heard by one under our changes.
Conservative Members talk about the Crown court as if it were an ancient institution. I should remind them that it was established in 1971—the year before I was born—to replace a patchwork of part-time courts unable to cope with a rising caseload. Parliament acted because the country needed a more efficient system that could command public confidence. We now face an emergency in the courts, and we must act. As Lord Chancellor, my responsibility is to ground reform in the rule of law and the right to a fair trial. We will ensure cases are dealt with at the right level, proportionate to their severity, and deliver the swifter justice victims deserve.
I am also clear that we must future-proof our approach. Technology is changing almost every aspect of our lives, and the courts can be no exception. That means we must modernise. We have asked Sir Brian to write a second report, focused on efficiency and how we can make much better use of technology to deliver the modern and effective courts the public rightly expect.
We will also continue to support victims, to make sure they have the confidence to come forward and see justice through to its conclusion. I announced this week that I will provide multi-year funding for victim support services, including specialist emotional and practical support for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and increase budgets to reflect rising costs. That will give providers the certainty to plan for the next three years. It amounts to a total record investment in victim support services of £550 million—more than half a billion. I want those victims to stay the course.
Finally, we must also be honest that this is a problem that has taken years to build up, so it will take years to fix. The changes I am proposing will require legislation, which will take time to implement. Our investment will also need time to have an effect, but we are pulling every possible lever to move in a positive direction, and my ambition for the backlog to start coming down by the end of this Parliament remains. I commend this statement to the House.
Source:
Hansard
