Criminal Court Reform

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend very much for the question he raises. It is an important point and I am sure the rest of your Lordships’ House will want to pay tribute to my noble friend for the work that he did when standing where I am now, as well as for his long service as a magistrate. He speaks from great experience.

There are two reasons why the Crown Court Bench Division will not include lay justices. The first, as my noble friend will know, is that we do not have enough to staff that at the moment. We have enough justices to run the magistrates’ court and make sure that we do not then end up with a lot of backlogs there. We are running a recruitment programme and hope to recruit 2,000 more, but, at present, we do not have sufficient numbers. The second reason is about speeding up the process. Any judge who has sat on an appeal from the magistrates’ court always sits with two lay justices. It takes a lot longer because of the fact that consultation is required, whereas the point here is to make things faster and quicker. For those reasons, we are not going to adopt that recommendation of Sir Brian—and they are principled reasons.

As for the perfectly proper point about diversity, the judiciary is becoming more diverse. It is not where we want it to be but it is getting there. What it does have is extensive training in matters to do with issues of diversity, fairness and disproportionate impacts on particular sectors of the population. We do not really know what juries think about this because they do not have that kind of training, but we are satisfied that those issues can be dealt with within what is proposed.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, as a former criminal barrister, albeit nothing like as successful as the noble Baroness was, I put on record my support for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and for the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. The Minister talked about the Government going ahead with “heavy investment” in courts and legal aid, and I certainly support both those initiatives. The Minister in the Commons said that to bring down court case backlogs:

“We need investment, structural reform and modernisation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/25; col. 20.]


However, has the noble Baroness seen the OBR report which states that after last week’s Budget, the MoJ’s capital budget is going to be cut by 3% per annum in real terms? Was she aware of that, and, in spite of that cut, can she confirm that this investment will still go ahead?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The answer to the noble Lord is yes. These are the matters of expenditure to which my right honourable friend committed himself in the other place, and they will go ahead.