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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing a debate on this crucial subject, and for the typical expertise and measured, analytical tone that he brings to it. I thought, until the speech of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), that something of a consensus had broken out among us. To quote the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, “something must be done about it”—I think we can all agree on that.
In the opening words of part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s review, he tells us that
“Criminal justice is in crisis.”
Indeed, it is. This Government inherited a record and rising courts backlog. As of June 2025, the open Crown court caseload stood at over 79,000 cases and it is rising. Other hon. Members have spoken to the human impact of that. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) for raising her constituent’s case. It is a graphic illustration of the impact of the Crown court backlog bequeathed to us by the previous Government, and particularly the impact of the appalling delays on victims.
The backlog not only places a psychological strain on victims, disrupting their ability to function, work and maintain relationships; it corrodes justice, because many of those victims—and indeed witnesses—pull out of the process, meaning that trials become ineffective. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it also has an impact on defendants—those who are accused of a crime—as well as on our prisons, and on all those who serve within the system. It creates increasingly perverse incentives to exploit the delays and ultimately undermines the public’s confidence in justice. As many hon. Members have said, justice delayed is justice denied.
I reject the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle that this Government have sat idly by. Far from it. We inherited a crisis, in both our prisons and our courts, and we have gripped that crisis. It is a fact that, as of today, the Government have added record, historic numbers of sitting days for our courts: 5,000 sitting days more than the number allocated by the previous Government. As other hon. Members have pointed out, we have invested in the workforce crucial to running our criminal courts, and in our solicitors, with an additional £92 million in legal aid on top of a £24 million investment in our duty solicitors. We also, of course, commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, one of our greatest jurists, to undertake his review. If the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle had bothered to read beyond the first couple of paragraphs of the 388-page report—
Sarah Sackman
I will conclude my point, then give way.
Sir Brian tells us that “greater financial investment”—which by the way, the Government have already begun to make—
“on its own, without systemic reform, cannot solve this crisis.”
That is a premise that the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam set out in his remarks, and it is absolutely right. We cannot sit our way out of this crisis. Of course, additional sitting days are part of the solution but, as Sir Brian Leveson and his team have told us, greater financial investment—namely sitting days on their own, without systemic reform—cannot solve the crisis. The Government will heed that lesson.
Dr Mullan
Just for information, I have read the whole report and it does not do the Minister justice, given her usual, sensible approach, to suggest that the fact I and many other hon. Members, including some in her own party, do not agree with her means that we have not read the report.
Sarah Sackman
I am delighted to hear that the hon. Member has read the report. I was not seeking to politicise the discussion. It sounded like, in many respects—other than the issue of jury trials, to which I will turn in due course—there had been an outbreak of consensus that something needed to be done. I want to draw attention to the central premise of Sir Brian Leveson’s report: that, in and of itself, greater financial investment—which of course is a necessary ingredient—will be insufficient to dig our way out of this crisis.
Grip is needed, and it is grip that the Government are showing. Three strands are required. One is investment. That is a question of the number of sitting days. As I said, we are setting record numbers of sitting days. That requires investment in our workforce and, as other hon. Members have pointed out, investment in the infrastructure of justice—investment in the court estate.
Sarah Sackman
I will give way in a moment; allow me to finish this point.
The second strand is modernisation. While we await part 2 of Brian Leveson’s report, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is undertaking modernisation and efficiency measures. The adoption of technology and the increased use of video hearings, which I witnessed on a visit to Kingston Crown court last week, are enabling us to realise some of those productivity benefits, but we need to go further and faster. I look forward to seeing what Sir Brian recommends in the second part of his review. We need investment and modernisation, but also, as I said, fundamental, once-in-a-generation structural reform to ensure that we progress cases quickly and more proportionately.
A number of hon. Members have outlined the variety of ways in Sir Brian’s holistic package in which we may reduce delays in the Crown court, retaining more cases in lower courts—where 90% of criminal cases are now heard without a jury—and also looking at how we might divert demand away from the system in the first place through making greater use of out-of-court disposals. There is also a proposal for a new bench division in the Crown court jurisdiction.
I understand and take heed of the contributions of a number of hon. Members—my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) and for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi), and the hon. Members for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), for Bexhill and Battle and for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller). All of them rightly expressed an admiration for jury trials and a concern that they remain a cornerstone of our legal culture and British justice. I can reassure hon. Members that the jury trial will remain a cornerstone of British justice for the most serious crimes.
The essay question, as it were, that we have set ourselves and Sir Brian is: how do we deal with more cases more quickly and proportionately, so that we can squarely look the victim my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford referred to in the eye and say, “We did everything within our gift to reduce the delays”? Timeliness is an essential ingredient of justice. We can all agree that the state’s obligation is to deliver a fair trial. It is not a right to a jury trial; it is a right to a fair trial, and timeliness is a key ingredient in that.
Sir Ashley Fox
Has the Minister’s Department done any analysis of how much time would be saved by adopting Sir Brian’s proposals on jury trials, and if so, what was the result?
Clive Efford (in the Chair)
Before the Minister answers, please bear in mind that I will be looking to bring in Jeremy Wright at 5.58 pm.
Sarah Sackman
I certainly will, Mr Efford.
Sir Brian Leveson proposed the Crown court bench division idea based on consultation with experts, members of the profession and the judiciary. He makes the point that the deliberation of 12 members of a jury is less efficient than the deliberation of an individual judge who has heard the evidence, because it involves dealing with one person. As I understand it, the modelling analysis undertaken to support Sir Brian’s report suggests a time saving in the region of 20% to 30%. Before such a proposal could be adopted, we would need to test that and understand whether that finding is robust, but as the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it stands to reason. In comparative criminal jurisdictions that have either one judge or a bench of three, cases are processed and progressed faster than under the current, jury trial system.
Ultimately, what we are looking to achieve is to ensure a fair trial for every person who comes into the criminal process. That is what we must guarantee, and we support Sir Brian’s overarching principles for reform. Plainly, we have to carefully consider each and every one of those proposals and all 388 pages before we provide our response in due course.
Sir Jeremy Wright
As the Minister says, she will have to consider each of Sir Brian’s proposals, although she will know that he says that they are to be taken as a “package” and not with a “pick-n-mix” approach. Is that something that the Government accept? Will they take the view that it is either all of Sir Brian’s recommendations or none of them, or not?
Sarah Sackman
As the right hon. and learned Member laid out, and as Sir Brian laid out, it is a highly complex system with lots of moving parts. The overall objective is to bear down on the backlog and reduce these delays. We must consider the totality of Sir Brian’s recommendations in careful detail and establish whether they do enough to achieve that overall objective. If we think they do not achieve that objective, it will be necessary to consider other ways to reduce the backlog.
We will put forward a holistic package, but I will not comment at this stage on whether it will include the entirety of these recommendations. That is something we will have to consider very carefully. Ultimately, as I said, our objective is to deliver swifter justice for victims and bear down on the backlog. How we achieve that has to be led by the evidence, and this is an important component of that, which is why I answered the hon. Member for Bridgwater in the way that I did.
Ayoub Khan
The Minister rightly points out that we need investment, modernisation and structural reform, but one of the biggest elephants in the room is prosecution and defence barristers. We have seen a very low take-up of that profession because graduates do not feel that the income, which can be below the national minimum wage, is sufficient. We have also seen a lot of people leave the profession, so although we can have all these sitting days, we simply do not have enough counsel in Crown court to deal with trials. What does the Minister have to say about that?
Sarah Sackman
The hon. Member is absolutely right. As I said, the workforce is key—they are delivering a vital, frontline public service. We need to invest not just in the barristers, but in the rest of the staff who run our courts every single day, and that is why we have made a record investment in criminal legal aid.
The hon. Member is right: when others speak about empty courtrooms and sitting days, we have to look at the capacity of the whole system. It is not simply a question of adding judicial time; it is about making sure that the system has enough capacity—enough court staff, solicitors, prosecutors and defence lawyers—to meet the demand coming in. We must make it an investment that ensures that this is an attractive profession and one that can meet the public’s needs.
Sarah Sackman
I am content to give way, but I am conscious of time, so this may have to be the last intervention.
Tessa Munt
I want the Minister to respond to the point about experts who will not or cannot work to legal aid rates and the legal funding that is not granted in time, which causes such a long delay when defence solicitors cannot get the access they need to experts.
Sarah Sackman
I am happy to follow up with the hon. Member on that.
In short, this Government believe that once-in-a-generation reform is necessary to address the crisis in our courts. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done, and we will do what it takes, but we also know that we need to get it right. That is why we are taking the time to carefully consider Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations and why I welcome today’s debate. I welcome the views and insights of hon. Members across the House, as we consider necessary reforms to save our justice system.