Courts and Tribunals Bill

Joe Robertson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

The number of outstanding cases in the Crown court is 79,619. The outgoing Conservative Government promised to reduce the backlog; it should have been 53,000 by April last year. Their abject failures led the present Government to ask one of the country’s most foremost experts on the criminal courts, Sir Brian Leveson, to propose comprehensive court reforms—reforms without precedent in half a century. Sir Brian produced his review in two parts, totalling over 1,000 pages and 180 recommendations. The Bill legislates where legislation is necessary to implement parts of Sir Brian’s review.

Given the current dire situation, with many victims waiting two or more years for their cases to be resolved and defendants spending far too long in custodial remand, the Government are right to propose structural change; otherwise, they would be endorsing perpetual delay.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andy Slaughter]

Not yet; I am conscious of the time.

The removal of the right to elect for either way offences in clause 1 is the single most significant measure in reducing the caseload of the Crown court, with the Bill’s impact assessment indicating that that change will see 16,000 fewer sitting days in the Crown court each year.

In clause 6, the Government propose to increase the maximum sentencing power of the magistrates court to 18 months. We are told that will save a further 8,000 sitting days in the Crown court. Taken together, those two measures—ending election and extending magistrates’ powers—represent a sizeable shift of the caseload out of the Crown court and into the magistrates court. That will deliver on the main objective of these reforms, which is to ensure the capacity of the Crown court to try the most serious criminal cases in a fair and timely manner. There has been less scrutiny on how magistrates will cope with their new responsibilities; I will deal with that in a moment.

Clauses 3 to 5—the provisions that have attracted the most debate—will establish the Crown court bench division to enable cases with a likely sentence of three years or less to be tried on indictment without a jury. Clause 4 will allow trial by judge alone for some complex and lengthy cases. Compared to the other measures in part 1 of the Bill, those will have a less significant effect on the backlog, but a still substantial 5,000 Crown court days will be saved.

I accept the Government’s argument that there is a strong case for modernising how the Crown court operates. Some improvement will be achieved through adopting the measures on efficiency set out in part 2 of Sir Brian Leveson’s review, or the additional resources promised under the concordat with the Lady Chief Justice that will remove restrictions on court sitting days, but those are unlikely to be enough on their own. Given the crisis that the criminal courts are facing, I am willing to support the creation of the Crown court bench division and the other measures in part 1 of the Bill.

I do not accept the case made by some that the proposals represent the end for jury trial and that the Bill should be opposed on that basis. Of the 3% of criminal cases that currently go before a jury, about a third—some 4,000—of the less serious of those offences, such as possession of class A drugs, car theft, affray and large-scale waste dumping, will now go before a judge alone. I do not believe that undermines the jury system, although it will undoubtedly change how some cases are tried. Therefore, arrangements for judge-only trials in the Crown court need to be carefully reviewed once they are in force to test whether they deliver the time saving promised without undermining the right to a fair trial.

I turn to my reservations on the proposals. I am concerned that magistrates courts will not be able to cope with the increase in caseload envisaged by the Bill. The work of the magistrates court is delivered by a range of dedicated public servants: magistrates, district judges, legal advisers, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service staff, probation, the Crown Prosecution Service and legal aid lawyers. However, we know that recruiting and retaining many of those key personnel are long-standing problems.

The Lord Chancellor wrote to the Justice Committee last week and told us that the Ministry of Justice hopes to recruit thousands of magistrates and hundreds of legal advisers and district judges over the next year or two. I am concerned that those are very ambitious targets, and that even if the recruitment bear fruit, they will not meet the challenge of diverting 24,000 days of complex hearings from the Crown court each year while dealing with the existing problems in the magistrates court, which has its own backlog.

Clause 7, which seeks to reform appeals from the magistrates court, will require electronic recording of proceedings. That strikes me as a significant change. The impact assessment is not clear about how much that will cost, but I doubt whether it can be delivered either quickly or cheaply.

Another area of concern is the process for allocating cases for judge-only trials. Prosecution and defence lawyers will wish to make written and oral submissions, and some may seek to challenge decisions on allocation by judicial review. To those concerns should be added the differing eligibility for legal aid in the Crown and magistrates courts and concerns that the loss of a lay presence in determining innocence or guilt risks losing diversity and adding unconscious bias.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Neither the question nor the answer were pithy enough.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q Why was it possible to get through two trials a day in the ’70s, but it is not now?

Sir Brian Leveson: There are lots of reasons.

[Joe Robertson]

But jury trials are not the principal reason.

Sir Brian Leveson: No, no, I do not and have never blamed jury trials at all. The reason is that the complexity has changed. Pace, disclosure of unused material, special measures, bad character, hearsay and data—cell site data, which is now critical to almost every single prosecution, and data taken from phones—have all added to the complexity and length of trials. I am not criticising juries at all, and I welcome jury trials, but the threshold must now be adjusted if we are to get justice for everybody in good time.

[The Chair]

That brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions during this panel. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence, Sir Brian. We would have liked to have longer with you, but we have many witnesses to question. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you for coming and for giving evidence.

Sir Brian Leveson: You are very welcome, Sir John. If I can help in any other way, I will. I am happy to meet parliamentarians: I have offered to meet the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, and I am happy to meet anybody to talk about this on a cross-party basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paulette Hamilton]

Thank you. You have explained that perfectly.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Victims say that they want to see greater diversity in the criminal justice system, and I agree with them. Which group of people is more diverse: juries, the British public or judges?

Dame Vera Baird: Is it your only point? The answer would be that judges are not as diverse as juries.

[Joe Robertson]

Q So do the changes in the Bill reduce diversity in the criminal justice system?

Dame Vera Baird: Not in the slightest. I assume you know that 73% of people who are entitled to a jury trial do not elect it and choose to stay in the magistrates court. That is men, women and black people. Black people and women disproportionately elect trial because they clearly feel that they will get a fairer trial with a diverse jury, but who says that is right? On the day, if you were a sex offender with some nasty allegations, for instance, you would have a better chance of acquittal in front of a judge than you ever would in front of a jury. It is just an opportunity to try to pick the best trial for yourself, but it is a punt in the dark. It is a go on the wheel of fortune. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it will not.

[Joe Robertson]

Q But we do agree that people with more diverse backgrounds elect jury trials and that option is being removed for them.

Dame Vera Baird: Seventy-three per cent of people offered jury trials do not take the offer up. Are you sure that the term “elect” is correct? Is it not “demand”?

[Joe Robertson]

I am asking the questions.

[The Chair]

Joe, I think three punts is enough. We have to move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Q Professor Hohl, do you think the Bill will lead to a fairer system, particularly for women?

Professor Hohl: This is an unanswerable question. What is fairness? [Interruption.] Well, it is an answerable question, but not a black and white one. We have heard this morning about a separation between the speediness of justice and the fairness of justice, as if they were two different things, when all the research shows that, for both defendants and victims, the time taken is part of justice. To artificially separate them does not work.

The way we measure the fairness of the system is about due process, not about outcomes. We cannot measure fairness through conviction and acquittal rates. The way our system is set up is about due process. Due process is not taking place when the system is on its knees, so getting the system to function better, so that due process can take place, should lead to a fairer system—provided that the Bill functions as intended.

[Joe Robertson]

Q May I ask for a clarification? Is Charlotte on her own in her views? Is she the only person who holds the views she has expressed?

Dame Vera Baird: Of course not, and I did not intend to say that. I have been trying to think, since we discussed it, about how I would feel if my experience were being used for a political cause, and it had been a very nasty experience. I might feel the same sort of—I do not know whether it is resentment or disappointment, or whether it is that it was inappropriate. I can well understand that, but many other victims do not agree that this will not help.

Women are waking up every morning, for three or four years, dreading the day when they will have to relive what happened to them in rape cases, or a man who has been very badly beaten up might wake every morning, worrying that he will have to relive it. It goes on and on like that, because there is a right to demand—as, I am afraid, I would phrase it—a trial for relatively small offences. I do not make little of them, but those will be in the queue. If Charlotte’s case is coming up next Monday, all the cases that have elected for trial before hers will be in the queue in front of it.

[Dr Mullan]

indicated dissent.

Dame Vera Baird: I see Kieran shaking his head, but there is no other way. There is a limited opportunity to give priority to cases. Obviously a very important point is whether the defendant is in custody. Most rape defendants are not in custody, because it is a “one word against the other” case, so they cannot be given any real priority for that reason. We end up very regularly with cases that took as long as Charlotte’s. That is really awful for a large number of victims. It also gives very little to the people who want this right: 64% of people who elect for trial plead guilty before they get to trial. You have to ask why they are electing for trial if they are going to plead guilty, but they have blocked up the jury list all of that time. This is about freeing up the jury list.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Hack]

Q Thank you for sharing your experiences. It has been incredibly powerful. Jade Blue, you said that change is not optional—we need to reduce the suffering. That has resonated with me. We need to create a system that is bearable. As victims—and you have obviously experienced trials at different places in the system—do you feel that these reforms would have made the system bearable? Is there anything specific in the reforms that you could point to?

Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott: I guess there is the hope of fewer adjournments and fewer last-minute changes, which we hear about quite a lot. Any measure that could increase capacity for these kinds of cases is a measure we could get behind. Just having that—being able to plan your life and have reassurances that it will be going ahead—is important.

In the past, one of us mentioned floating trials for rape cases, which is, quite frankly, just absurd. Being able to have dedicated time to ensure that these cases do not become floating trials and that there is capacity for them to be seen in a prompt and timely manner would be welcome.

Morwenna Loughman: The first time my trial was listed, unbeknown to me and the rest of my family, it was listed as a floating trial, which means that two or more cases—in this instance, rape cases—are scheduled for the same time, on the same date and in the same court, on the assumption that at least two of you will drop over the course because it is so harrowing and re-traumatising. That is why mine got delayed right at the last minute.

We have talked a lot about the education of judges, which is absolutely essential, but we must also consider the education of juries. As I have said, they are not bastions of infallibility. The man who raped me was convicted. He was found guilty, but not unanimously. He was sentenced to 15 years, which gives an indication as to the level of injury that I sustained.

Two members of the jury found him not guilty and acquitted him of all charges. It was a majority vote; there was no unanimity, and it took them three and a half days to deliberate, even though I had received 48 injuries and he was arrested on the scene. I could go on about the extenuating circumstances. In every sense, how did it take them three and a half days to not even conclusively decide that this man had raped me?

Charlotte Meijer: I will add to that. The removal in the Bill of the defendant’s right to elect will make the victim feel empowered, knowing that the perpetrator is not in control. As I have said, there is the recording of magistrates courts, and the Bill is our hope that the waiting time will go down. That is the core reason why we are doing this. The system cannot get any worse than it is, so the waiting going down will be a significant change.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Thank you very much for sharing these very powerful experiences to help all of us here make better decisions. I would like to direct my questions not to the criminal court changes, but the family court changes. I should say that I was a practising family law solicitor and represented mothers who wanted to stop abusive fathers from seeing their children, and my wife is still a practising family law solicitor, registered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society.

I turn specifically to the removal of the presumption that a child should have involvement from both parents. What do you say to the overwhelming body of evidence that for most children—not all, but most—it is in their best interests to have some contact with both parents?

Farah Nazeer: The point is about abusive relationships. If the court is set up to look at the welfare of the child primarily, if there is not a history of abuse or domestic abuse in that setting, that will invariably be the outcome. This is to protect those cases where there is abuse within the context of the relationship, so it is not a case of one thing or another thing; it clears the path so a court can look objectively at whether or not there is a safeguarding issue there for the child without the burden of the presumption of contact. You start with the welfare of the child.

[Joe Robertson]

Q But the law is really clear. Section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989 says that

“the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”

That is already there. Section 1(3)(e) says that the court must have regard to harm that a child

“has suffered or is at risk of suffering”.

Those two provisions will instantly knock out any presumption that it is in the child’s best interest to have some involvement—that does not even mean contact—of both parents. I am just trying to understand why you think this change is needed, given that those provisions are already in the law.

Farah Nazeer: Primarily because those provisions have not saved the lives of the 63 children who have died since Women’s Aid has been working on this. In spite of known abuse, the court has granted unsafe contact, primarily to abusive fathers, and those children have died as a result.

Last year we published a report called “Nineteen More Child Homicides”. Those child homicides were as a result of known perpetrators having unsafe child contact in spite of the court hearing about abuse by those fathers, predominantly—18 were fathers, one was a mother—who then murdered their children. The previous report some four years before also saw 19 children murdered in exactly the same set of circumstances. The report before that saw significantly more children murdered. What this does is set a very clear bar that you start with the welfare of the child. This is a response to the failure of that culture. That is why it is so important.

[Joe Robertson]

Q My point is that bar is already there. The Children Act starts with it—it is in section 1(1). I do not need to say this, but absolutely every death, particularly where the state has been involved and a court decision has been made, is a tragedy, but presumably you will agree that those tragedies will continue even with this change in the law if other things are not done within the family courts to deal with what are primarily safeguarding issues, rather than broad presumptions over children’s interests.

Farah Nazeer: Absolutely. The presumption is a really important first step because without the presumption, we will automatically default to the status quo. That is where the training and an understanding of domestic abuse and coercive control come in. As you can hear, we are not in a situation where safeguarding is applied consistently or domestic abuse or sexual violence are understood consistently. That is where the mandatory training piece has to come in to accompany the change to the law.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q Thank you so much for being here today. I am really interested in the victim’s perspective on fairness, the treatment of victims within the current criminal justice system and the changes being made.

As a former Crown prosecutor, one aspect of the criminal justice system that concerned me was the appeals process from the magistrates court to the Crown court. As you all know, if somebody is convicted in the magistrates court, they have an automatic right to a retrial at the Crown court without having to give any reasons, regardless of whether there was a fair trial in the magistrates court or otherwise. If the victims and witnesses want to continue the process, they have to give evidence all over again through that appeal, otherwise the appeal is successful.

The Bill seeks to get rid of that automatic right and put the process more in line with the Crown court appeals process. There will have to be grounds to suggest that the original trial was unfair. As victims and survivors who have had access to the criminal justice system, what is your view on the current system of retrials and appeals from the magistrates court in terms of fairness to victims and the likelihood of victims attending to give evidence and being re-traumatised? I am also interested in whether the automatic right to appeal and have a retrial is used as coercive control in the current justice system. There is a lot to unpack there, I grant you.

Charlotte Meijer: There are a lot of questions there. From my experience, we will never know whether my perpetrator picked a magistrates court because he knew that, if he was found guilty, he could have then dragged me on to a Crown court case—we do not know.

It is absolutely terrifying because, as we all know, going through a trial for the first time is horrific—it is something that I never want to do in my life again. I had the ability to go to court again for rape, and I declined it; if there had been an appeal and I had to go again to a Crown court, I probably would have dropped out. It is not something that I would want to experience twice.

There is also a really interesting thing there. What does that say about our magistrates courts? Are we basically saying that they cannot do what they should be doing? I think that changing the system strengthens the trials and credibility of magistrates courts—they should be credible, given that 90% of cases go there. It also shows that it is the final choice; the decision will be made there, unless more evidence comes forward.

On what you said about fairness to the victim, there is obviously no right to appeal for a victim if there is a not guilty verdict. I know there is a tiny bit of legislation to say that, if there is a huge amount of new evidence, they could reopen a case. However, that barely happens. You are basically told no, so how come a perpetrator can just appeal without any reason? From victims’ perspectives, and from my perspective, it is an absolute no-brainer.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Having been a Crown prosecutor for 21 years, I find it very disturbing that you take that view.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q As a former family solicitor, I want to focus my questions on the proposal to remove the presumption that involvement by a parent in a child’s life is in the child’s best interest or good for the child’s welfare. Given that, in children’s proceedings, it is already the law that the child’s welfare shall be paramount, and given that, sometimes, children can be used as tokens between warring parents, I wonder, Samantha Hillas, whether you find it strange that we are going to hear evidence today only from parent groups, and not from groups representing children’s interests. Is that odd to you, as it is to me, given that we are dealing with changes to children’s proceedings, where a child’s welfare is paramount?

Samantha Hillas: I have not made the arrangements for who is attending, so I do not find it odd. Whoever has been asked to attend is attending. I can talk a little bit about the repeal of the presumption—

[Joe Robertson]

Q Given that there is no one here representing children, as a children’s lawyer, can you help the Committee understand what a presumption of a parent’s involvement in a child’s life is, as compared with the overriding concern for a child’s welfare that must be uppermost in the court’s mind? Can you help the Committee understand what that means?

Samantha Hillas: I am not quite sure I understand the question, so I will answer it like this. From the practitioner perspective, we have always found the insertion of the presumption fairly odd, because it goes without saying that it is usually in children’s best interest to have a relationship with both parents. Where there are circumstances in which it is not safe for a child to have a relationship with both parents, the child’s welfare is protected and is paramount under section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989.

The insertion of section 1(2A) into that Act in 2014 came on the back of quite a lot of protest and demonstration by certain pressure groups for the amendment to be made, to try to promote a presumption of involvement that really is tacitly always there. For practitioners, it was probably something of an otiose insertion. The difficulty with it is that even though a review has demonstrated that it has not been the basis for judgments—the welfare principle has not been subordinate to it; the welfare principle has still been paramount—it has created a sort of pro-contact culture.

You have to remember that when it came in, that coincided with basically the eradication of legal aid in family cases. Even though lawyers would advise that the welfare principle is paramount, if you are a litigant in person without the funds to afford legal fees, you might read that presumption and read a pro-contact culture into it, and might then be agreeing to situations that are not safe for a child.

I have not answered your question, but—I am sorry that this is taking quite a long time—practitioners thought that it was a fairly redundant insertion, and it is sensible for it to be repealed.

[Joe Robertson]

Q My questions cannot be answered because there is no one here representing children’s groups, but that part of the Children Act 1989 is not about presumption of contact, is it? It is about presumption in favour of involvement in a child’s life.

Samantha Hillas: Yes. Well, there is a presumption that a child’s best interests would be served, as I said in the first place, by having a relationship with both parents. It is only where there would be a risk to that child that there would not be involvement.

[Joe Robertson]

But the Government want to remove that.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for coming today. My question is for Claire Davies. The open caseload is 80,000 and is projected by some potentially to rise to 200,000. In your evidence so far, you have not been able to identify a timeframe for the measures that you would prefer to be the focus at the moment. Do you think that victims would view that with concern, given that we have all agreed that justice delayed is justice denied?

Claire Davies: Of course they are going to view it with concern—it is common sense that anyone would be concerned—but we need to have the opportunity, which we have not been given, to demonstrate that in fact it will not reach that high with the measures that we support.

Efficiency in our system has long been lacking, despite repeated efforts, and this Government have shown that they will invest, and substantial investment is what is needed. We are not afraid of change—we make that absolutely clear. A lot more use could be made of technology in our courts; remote courtrooms could take the shorter hearings away from the trial courts so that they can concentrate on what they should be doing and have the full use of a court day to maximise that.

It is a combination of features in the trial, but the matters that we have proposed—you heard this morning, as well, that we encourage the use of specialised courts—would have a dramatic impact. You have to remember that new sentencing provisions came into force on 22 March, and we believe that they will also have a dramatic impact on the current caseload. The ability to give suspended sentences for a longer period of up to three years will have an impact, as will efficiency measures and, most importantly, the investment that the Government have made in relation to uncapped sitting days. All of that, combined, will have a dramatic impact, to the point that losing, or curtailing, the right to jury trial—because we are not losing it completely. We make that clear and accept it. We say that it is not necessary to lose the legitimacy that juries bring to our court system.

The judiciary have made great strides in their diversity, but they are still not representative of the communities they serve. The equalities statement makes clear the way that people elect those of different ethnic backgrounds. Given all of that combined, we would urge that clauses 1 to 7, which deal with repealing or restricting the right to a jury trial under certain circumstances, are not brought into force. There are many more ways in which action can be taken.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Seventh sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I rise to speak to the new clause that is tabled in my name, which I do not intend to push to a vote. It would require the Lord Chancellor to conduct and lay before Parliament a review of the impact of clause 3 after 12 months, and again after no later than 36 months. At its heart, the new clause is both modest and reasonable. It does not seek to block the Government’s proposals outright, nor does it attempt to rewrite the substance of the Bill. It simply asks that we understand the impact of the changes we are making and that we are accountable for them.

As Members across the House know, clause 3 introduces significant changes to the operation of the courts, particularly through the insertion of the new provisions into the Senior Courts Act 1981. Those provisions mark a clear shift in how justice is delivered. When we make changes of this scale, we have a duty not only to legislate, but to reflect on their impact and remain accountable for the consequences.

The Law Society of England and Wales has raised concerns that reforms to court processes must be carefully monitored to ensure they do not inadvertently undermine access to justice, particularly for those who already face barriers in navigating the legal system. These concerns are drawn from the experience of legal practitioners working day to day in the courts, particularly in cases involving litigants in person who often are trying to navigate complex procedures without legal representation. It has also emphasised the importance of evaluating how such changes operate in practice, including their impact on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and on the capacity of the courts to deliver justice effectively.

The society has made it clear that such changes can have unintended consequences that are often felt most by the people who already struggle to access justice. That goes directly to public confidence in the justice system. Surely, trust and perception in the justice system are just as important as the legal framework itself. Concerns have also been raised by the Family Services Foundation, which highlights how procedural changes can disproportionately affect vulnerable individuals and families already facing complex challenges. That reflects its work with the families involved in the court system, where even small procedural changes can have a significant impact on people who are already dealing with instability, stress or crisis situations.

New clause 29 would ensure that Parliament receives clear evidence-based assessments of how the provisions are working in practice. Crucially, it would require that the assessments consider the impact on two groups: people from ethnic minority backgrounds and white British individuals living in lower-income households. As highlighted in earlier stages of the scrutiny of the Bill, there is a lack of clear statutory review built into the provisions, in particular in clause 3.

Some may ask, why specify those groups? The answer is simple—because justice is not experienced equally by all. We know all too well through evidence, lived experience and countless testimonies that people from ethnic minority communities often have lower levels of trust in the criminal justice system. That shapes how justice is perceived and whether it is seen as legitimate. For ethnic minority communities, this is fundamentally about trust in the justice system and perception of fairness.

Equally, we must recognise that socioeconomic disadvantage can profoundly affect a person’s experience of the courts. White British individuals from lower-income households are also more likely to feel marginalised by systems that appear distant, complex or unresponsive to their circumstances. If this House is serious about fairness, we must be serious about understanding how reforms affect those who are most at risk of being left behind.

New clause 29 does not assume the outcome. It does not claim that the provisions of clause 3 will necessarily have a negative impact, but it does recognise that without proper review, we simply will not know. That in itself would be a failure of our responsibility as legislators. The timeline set out in the new clause—a review after 12 months and a further review no later than after 36 months—strikes a careful balance. The reviews allow for early identification of any emerging issues, while also ensuring that long-term effects are properly understood. Importantly, the reviews would be laid before Parliament, ensuring transparency and enabling this House to scrutinise the findings. If the changes are working well, a review would demonstrate that; if they are not, a review would give us the opportunity to put things right.

I urge Members across the House to support new clause 29, not as a challenge to the Bill, but as a practical step towards fairness, transparency and accountability in our justice system. This House should be confident in reforms, but it should also be confident in knowing when to pause, assess and reflect. That is all that the new clause asks for.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

I wish to address a number of issues in relation to this grouping. First, I will say something about the figures that have been quoted at length today and in previous sittings. Secondly, I will say something about the reasons given by the Government for curtailing jury trials in this way. Then I want to go on to say something about evidence and procedure, and why jury trials exist at all, because sometimes it is possible to sit here listening, wondering whether the Government’s reasoning would not justify a banning of all jury trials for evermore on any crime. Finally, I will talk about some of the perversities that the hon. Member for Chichester has articulated well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Linsey Farnsworth]

No. I will make some progress; we need to make progress today.

The researchers found that more than 90% of respondents in the survey they conducted believed that discrimination on juries should be reported to trial judges and properly investigated, yet there is no mechanism under current law that allows juries to do so.

Appeal, a not-for-profit organisation, has submitted evidence opposing some elements of the Bill. However, in a paper that it prepared in 2024, Appeal set out concerns relating to majority decisions, as opposed to unanimous jury decisions, and the impact of racial bias. The case of R v. Connor et al was cited, in which questions from the jury suggested that there had been a focus on the defendant’s race and a letter from a juror after conviction confirmed racial bias in the jury’s deliberations.

Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 provides for confidentiality in jury decision making. However section 8A, enacted in Scotland, permits the Lord Justice General to allow information about deliberations from the jury room to be disclosed for the purposes of research. That provides an opportunity for the same to follow in England and Wales. Recent statistics show an increase in hate crime, including crime based on race and religion, rates of which spiked after Brexit and, recently, following the Southport murders. Now more than ever, we must be conscious of the impact that discrimination could have on the fairness, or otherwise, of jury trial.

[Joe Robertson]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I am about to conclude, so I will not.

I support new clause 29, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington, but I submit that the change and modernisation that the Bill seeks to introduce bring an opportunity to review all aspects of the criminal justice system in relation to ethnicity and socioeconomic background to ensure fairness for all.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eighth sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Sackman]

I think we are maybe dancing on the head of a pin. Whether it is a concession or not, I accept that there is no right of appeal of the allocation decision. I also accept that there is no obvious route to judicial review, because of the operation of section 29 of the Senior Courts Act. If I might say so, the hon. Member and I are agreeing. Whether he or the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle wants to categorise that as a concession, as a reduction of rights, that is a matter for them; but we are agreeing as to the legal position. What I wanted to do was set that out formally in writing, in response to that and to the various other questions that the Bar Council asked in their letter, because I thought that would be useful. However, we are in agreement, and I think that is why we can proceed to a vote, because we have a shared understanding of the law.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

I intended to intervene on the Minister to ask a question, but I am happy to pose it by way of a speech. She has indicated—in fact, she stated very clearly—that she wants to formally clarify in writing, but she is declining to formally clarify orally. Does she not accept that if we proceed to a vote on clause 3, she is at risk of inadvertently misleading this Committee if she cannot clarify what she says she wants to clarify in writing before we vote?

[Sarah Sackman]

I think I did clarify; I do not think I have anything more to say. I clarified it in answer to the hon. Member for Wimbledon. I am not going to say anything more; I think we should go to a vote.

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[Sarah Sackman]

In that case I will deal with amendments 30 to 32 once I have addressed amendments 29 and 61, because they all touch on similar issues in relation to clause 4.

Much has been said about the policy rationale behind this provision, and whether juries are somehow incapable of following complex trials involving fraud or financial matters. That is not the Government’s contention, although some of the cases that are routinely dealt with in Southwark Crown court, particularly in a modern environment with crypto and complex financial instruments, are indeed highly complex.

The primary issue is jury burden, which is a theme that emerged from the independent review of criminal courts, and it has long been identified as a significant issue. As long ago as 2001, Lord Justice Robin Auld said that the

“increase in the length of such trials over recent years has become a severe intrusion on jurors’ working and private lives. It cannot be good for them or for justice.”

Sir Brian Leveson picked up that theme in part 1 of his review, in which he said that

“the personal and financial burden placed on jurors, particularly those involved in lengthy trials, is significant.”

He also said that

“serious and complex fraud trials…place more significant burdens on court resources and jurors’ time.”

There is evidence of the financial strain on jurors who sit in lengthy trials, particularly those who are self-employed or who have caring responsibilities.

In addition, under the current system, the companies that jurors work for cannot claim back losses incurred while their employee is on jury service. As I have said before, we commend the participation in jury service of people from across society and from all backgrounds, which is why we are seeking to preserve jury trials for our most serious cases—those pertaining to matters that are not only serious for individuals but are in the public interest.

[Joe Robertson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Sackman]

I will make a bit of progress.

We also need to be mindful of the burden that lengthy trials place on jurors. In this country, between January 2024 and December 2025, almost 3,000 jurors sat in trials that lasted more than six weeks. We should be mindful that trials for fraud and serious financial crime, which are within the purview of this clause, are some of the longest and most demanding in the Crown courts. We also have to be mindful of our argument on the time savings of having judge-only trials for such cases.

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Clause 4 is deliberately drafted so that jury trial remains the default mode of trial. Judges will be required to apply the statutory test carefully and under the proper safeguards set out in the clause, considering suitability and the public interest in each individual case. I recognise the concerns raised by amendment 31, and I would welcome the opportunity to talk to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden outside the Committee about how the safeguards we have set out will operate in practice.

[Joe Robertson]

The Minister talks about the statutory test for complexity, among other things. I cannot identify the statutory test for complexity. Where is the test in the new legislation?

[Sarah Sackman]

We consider it to be set out in clause 4 as drafted. It is sufficiently flexible and will no doubt be subjected to interpretation. We think that, as drafted—with all the carefully prescribed exceptions to what could be included, in addition to the public interest exclusion—it is sufficiently clear, and that there is a clear understanding of the sorts of offences that would come within the provision.

I am also keen to work together constructively to ensure public confidence, particularly in cases involving loss of life, while still providing the courts with the flexibility they need for the clause to work appropriately. In the case of amendment 31, given the high bar already set in the clause and the cautious way that we expect judges will exercise these powers, we consider the statutory exclusion of these additional offences unnecessary. Again, I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden not to press her amendment.

Finally, the placement of amendment 32 in proposed new section 42B(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 means that it would not, in fact, exclude any offences beyond the indictable-only sexual offences that are expressly excluded by proposed new section 42B(2)(b). As I have said previously, we set up the clause so that jury trial is the default. Judges apply the test, and there are safeguards for case suitability and public interest. It would be very rare for sexual offences to be tried alongside the kinds of complex or lengthy fraud and financial cases that clause 4 is designed to capture. For those reasons, once again, I urge my hon. Friend not to press the amendment.

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In summary, the proposal for a Crown court bench division in complex and lengthy trials requires a robust mechanism for appeal on allocation if it is to be fair and effective. By including a right of appeal now, we would prevent the waste of resources associated with post-trial retrials, close the legal black hole created by the lack of judicial review for Crown court allocation, ensure consistency in how the test will be applied across the country and uphold the dignity of the defendant, acknowledging that the choice of forum is a decision of profound consequence. Let us ensure that the Bill includes the tools for that self-correction. We must not allow the pursuit of speed to strip away the procedural protections that ensure that our justice system remains of a high standard. Let us provide a right of appeal that is clear, immediate and fair.

[Joe Robertson]

I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the shadow Minister, which would ensure the right of appeal to a decision whether a trial should be heard by a jury. The Government’s reason for not accepting the amendment, as they have put forward on a number of previous amendments, is the principle of efficiency—that it would slow the system down and would not drive the efficiencies that they hope to secure through the Bill.

The principle of efficiency cannot be an untamed principle that runs roughshod over carefully fought legal principles of fairness and natural justice. Efficiency cannot simply trump everything. If efficiency has no limits, why have trials of more than a few days at all? The arguments have been well made by the shadow Minister, and I do not wish to repeat them, but it is not an inefficient process to allow a right of appeal. I assume that the decision made by the judge in the first instance on how to allocate the trial will not be a particularly lengthy process anyway, so an appeal of that decision will be no lengthier—indeed, less so.

I have never heard the argument that appeals are against efficiency in any other aspect of law. Indeed, appealing the substantive outcome of a case—a claim of wrongful conviction—has not one but many stages of appeal: appeal to the High Court, appeal to the Court of Appeal and appeal to the Supreme Court. I have never heard the argument that someone should not have the right to appeal the outcome of a trial because it is inefficient or might cause delays.

It seems that efficiency is being used to justify a fairly hastily put together Bill, and that the Government do not recognise the possibly unintended consequences of its provisions in order to get their business through. The best way of addressing those issues, and accepting that there might be loopholes and unintended consequences, is to give genuine due regard to amendments tabled in good faith, on this occasion by the shadow Minister, to improve the lawmaking process and the Bill.

The amendment does not seek to drive a coach and horses through what the Government are trying to achieve with the Bill, even though we disagree with some of it; it seeks to improve, to perfect and not to allow unfairness to creep into the Bill. I am sure that the Government do not intend the Bill to be unfair, but time and again they risk allowing it to be so.

[Sarah Sackman]

The amendment would effectively introduce a new right of appeal against a decision to order a judge-only trial. Once again the Government does not consider that to be necessary in the interests of fairness, or appropriate given the time saving this Bill seeks to achieve. We are seeking, by the process set out in clause 4, to encourage procedural finality and to avoid delay rather than setting up additional procedural layers to add complexity and delay.

Of course, all that should not come at the expense of overall fairness. That guarantee of fairness is expressed in a number of ways: because we consider the different modes of trial that might be afforded to a case to be fair; because a judge sitting alone will be required to give reasons for the allocation itself and then for the substantive verdict, whether a conviction or an acquittal; and because that in itself can be subject to an appeal in the Crown court in the usual way. We regard that as an important safeguard in terms of fairness, but we do not want to encourage mode-of-trial allocations—which we think that judges will do well, transparently, efficiently and having heard from both sides—to be relitigated. For those reasons, I urge the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joe Robertson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Sackman]

I am going to make some progress— I know the hon. Gentleman has raised this with me. Those responsible for drafting the legislation do not need to add further definitions of what we mean by “complex” and “lengthy”. That is well understood. As I said, given the other safeguards and considerations related to the kinds of cases that will be suitable, we think that the discretionary approach that judges will apply will suffice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I will speak against the inclusion of clause 4. It inserts part 6A in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which will allow complex or lengthy cases to be tried without a jury. My main opposition to the clause is that it is a pointless exercise by the Government that will in no way affect the backlog. The Government’s own impact assessment suggests that the savings will amount to just 200 sitting days per year, which is a tiny fraction—0.18% of the current sitting days. The Government argue that these cases can continue for many months, thereby wasting jurors’ time or putting additional pressure on those called for jury service. However, data from Southwark Crown court, where the majority of fraud and other such cases are heard, shows that only one or two cases per year exceed three months, and only two between 2018 and 2024 went beyond six months.

His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC has argued that jury trials impose discipline, which helps to reduce the length of fraud trials. Without that incentive, judge-alone trials may be as long as or even longer than jury trials. I alluded to this earlier, but jurors decide on issues of dishonesty and fact in these cases, which are not necessarily technical. Twelve jurors are therefore in a much better position to reach a decision.

I also have grave concerns about the terminology of “complex” and “lengthy”. I know the Minister has said that the meaning of complex and lengthy are well understood in the judiciary. I would argue that a lot of people in the legal profession are pushing back against that assertion, and that the Bill does not provide clarity on what they should determine to be complex or lengthy.

[Joe Robertson]

The hon. Member is making a very good speech, but she is almost being generous. The wording in the Bill is not “complex”; it is “complexity”, which is a description, not even a value. The Bill is even vaguer than what the hon. Member is suggesting in her well-made point.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank the hon. Member for his point; he characterises me very well as being generous.

I would also argue that the scope is expanded significantly if one of the offences that a defendant is charged with is fraud, money laundering or any of the offences that sit in that category. There can be 10 charges against a defendant, and if one of them is fraud, money laundering or terrorism funding, that entire case could be heard in a judge-alone trial.

The Minister spoke very clearly about recognising the burden on jurors. She made a legitimate point, and it is certainly reflected in reality. Especially when jury trials do not run as we would expect them to run, the impact on jurors can be huge, especially for those who are self-employed or have caring responsibilities. As I mentioned earlier, I ask the Minister to go away and look at the Maxwell hours, which have been successful for longer cases. For a morning session, it means that those who are self-employed are able to commit to working in the afternoons. In some cases, it means that those with caring responsibilities know that they are going to get home at a reasonable hour. The Maxwell hours are used in lots of different areas, and could be the answer to retaining the key principle of jury trials in fraud cases, while still ensuring a better experience for jurors.

Amendment 51 would prevent

“the Lord Chancellor adding further offences to the list in Schedule 1 by regulations.”

The concern is that it would give unconstrained power over the list of offences that may be heard without a jury on the basis that cases are considered complex or burdensome for jurors. That rationale could easily be extended to lengthy murder, rape, or drug trials.

As the shadow Minister mentioned, if the wording in schedule 1 specified fraud or that particular type of case, it would be a different matter. However, it does not; it just says “complex or lengthy”. The Minister makes the point that this is a complex area, and criminal offences are added all the time, but she also referred to the specific types of fraud cases. If she can include the provision of fraud in clause 1, that would provide a reassurance that there would not be additionality of scope. That is not to suggest that the current Lord Chancellor would be inclined to increase the scope, but a future Lord Chancellor may be able to extend the provision far beyond the huge change that the Government are already proposing.

Trials for things like terrorism, murder, rape and drug offences can last many months. They can be as complex as fraud cases, and they can involve multiple defendants and expert evidence. On that basis, the arguments that the Minister has made do not stand. That is why I will be voting against clause 4.

[Joe Robertson]

How long is a piece of string? The unanswerable question. I could ask another question: is a 2-metre piece of string a long piece of string? If I asked you that question, Ms Butler, you would have a lot of questions for me before you gave your answer, yet the Minister thinks it is easy to answer the question, “Is a two-week trial a long trial?”. She thinks it is obvious and that a judge will be able to make a decision. She is not willing to put a definition on that, because she says it is evident in the way that the Bill is drafted.

I look at the words in the Bill—which is all that a judge will have to make that decision. On length, it says that the judge will have to decide if the

“likely length of the trial…makes it appropriate for the trial to be conducted without a jury.”

On complexity, they will have to decide whether

“the likely complexity of the trial”

is

“appropriate for the trial to be conducted without a jury.”

It is even hard to decipher from that whether it means complex is good or bad for a jury. Complexity is just a description; it is not a value. This is incredibly unusual, novel and, I would say, badly worded legislation. Ordinarily, a provision of this sort would say something along the lines of: “If the court is satisfied that the length of trial is so long that it would make it unreasonable for a jury”. That would be more normal wording.

The principle of reasonableness, while giving discretion and, some might argue, a vague term in the English language, is a well-tested word in criminal law and the English legal system. We know what reasonableness means; it is an objective test—“What would an ordinary person think is reasonable?” What about appropriateness? Does that mean appropriate to that judge on that day? Does it mean appropriate to a particular, theoretical juror? There is absolutely no guidance in Bill about how this novel word, “appropriate”, should be interpreted. Even when there are words in legislation such as “reasonableness”, which are backed by decades or even centuries of case law, the judge is very often given guidance in the legislation as to what is and is not reasonable.

[Rebecca Paul]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. Hearing him read out what the law says brings home to me just how terrible this Bill is. Surely everyone can see that there is no clarity how it would work. Rather than there being any clear guidance, it essentially feels as though any judge can have their own view on complexity and length. We will end up with inconsistency and disputes and arguments about the approach. Surely, that could do the opposite of address the backlog by adding additional complexity and confusion to our justice system.

[Joe Robertson]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, the Bill will basically lead to a complete lottery in decision making, depending on the judge a person gets on the day. I suspect that judges ordinarily do not like vague law or having to provide their own interpretation. They are usually more comfortable if the statute is more precise, or if it is backed by caselaw, but there is no caselaw here.

On the issue of length, we know what the Minister thinks because she has told us in this Bill Committee. I do not criticise her for this opinion, but she thinks a case is long if it is disruptive to the personal or professional life of a juror or their wellbeing. That is her view as to what will make a case lengthy, and I do not criticise her for that, but there is no guidance here for the judge to consider those things—[Interruption.] I paraphrase her—she is welcome to intervene if she disagrees about how I characterise her views on what is lengthy for a juror.

[Dr Mullan]

I talked before about how judges will look to what Ministers have said around a measure in trying to interpret it, so if a judge is not clear what was meant by this, and pulls up Hansard to read what the Minister has said, surely they will take from the fact that the Minister has talked about the disruption to a juror’s life that they should have that as the test. What is disruptive to one person’s life is very different from what is disruptive to another’s.

[Joe Robertson]

I agree with my hon. Friend; he actually pre-empts the point I am about to get on to. I thank him for taking me on to that. It should be fairly obvious to most people that there will be a wide range of views as to how much time a person can take out of their ordinary life, bearing in mind that people are not called for jury service at the drop of a hat. They are not told, “You must cancel all your plans next week”; there is a degree of warning.

Most people take quite a wide view on how much time they can afford to give, depending on what is going on in their life. For some people, taking two weeks or even a week out is very disruptive. This theoretical person that the judge has to imagine would make an argument that it is appropriate that the trial should not take place with a jury, because they do not have a week in their busy life to just hand over.

Alternatively, others may say that they see it as a civic duty and a fundamental contribution they make to society to be available for jury trial if called. Perhaps they have never been called and they have reached a ripe old age, and they are happy and prepared to take a month or two out of their life to devote to making a decision on whether someone is guilty.

[Dr Mullan]

Currently, when a person sits on a jury, it is understood that, outside of the most extreme circumstances, they will be there for as long as the case takes. However, if the public get the sense that they can debate what asks are reasonable or unreasonable, I would not be surprised if jury members, in trials that go on a little bit, start sending notes to the judge to complain. They might say, “This has gone on for a week, and I didn’t think I’d be here for that long. I understand that if a trial goes on for too long, it shouldn’t be heard by a jury. This is going on too long. Judge, will you look at that?” That will open a whole can of worms about something that at the minute is extremely constricted in people’s minds.

[Joe Robertson]

Indeed. Might a judge, halfway through a trial, decide that it has suddenly become inappropriate, having heard whatever formal or informal representations are made on that point? Even if there is some objective consensus about how long an ordinary person in this country should be prepared to set aside to serve on a jury, does that in itself make it appropriate that a case should not be heard by a jury?

Even if we could agree, for example, that devoting any more than a month to a jury trial is disruptive to a person’s life, does that automatically make it inappropriate for a case to be heard in a jury trial? No, not at all. If it is inconvenient for someone to sit on a jury for a particular length of time, that does not mean the case is inappropriate for a jury trial. Even the Government are not willing to put a specific time value on that.

[Rebecca Paul]

As my hon. Friend was speaking, it suddenly occurred to me that under our current system, jurors can already make that argument—that if sitting on a jury would be particularly disruptive, they should not have to do so. How does that interact with this measure? It feels like this does not make sense.

[Joe Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are a number of personal and professional circumstances that can enable people to make that argument and get exempted from jury trial or, indeed, not have to sit on the jury in the original case but have it deferred to a more convenient time. She is absolutely right that flexibility for ordinary people in this country is already built into the way that juries are selected.

“Length” is probably the easiest of these three difficult terms; “complexity” is even harder to nail down. How is a judge supposed to decide what level of complexity makes it appropriate to have a jury? I would argue that the more complex a case, in certain circumstances, the more it should be heard by a jury, especially if the complexity relates to what is in the mind of the defendant, rather than, for example, complex financial papers.

Does the involvement of complex financial papers, on its own, necessarily make a trial more complex, if the real issue in the case is whether the defendant intended to be dishonest? As we have already heard with fraud cases, as well as most of the cases in schedule 1, the real issue is not whether something happened; it is the mindset—the legal term would be mens rea—of the person who did that thing. If they did something by accident or unintentionally, depending on the crime, that would often be enough for them to be acquitted. If they did something knowingly, dishonestly or recklessly, also depending on the crime, that would normally be enough for them to be convicted.

[Dr Mullan]

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate has given one example, but another, with which I expect people will be familiar, is the LIBOR trials. They were very complicated and sophisticated, and the appeals were successful because of a judge. It was the judge’s misdirection to the jury that led to the LIBOR trials becoming another example of cases collapsing. If anything, the evidence shows that it is the judges who are the issue here, not the juries.

[Joe Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Obviously judges are not infallible. That is not a criticism of judges—judges know that they can make mistakes. On the mindset of the person, I am unclear as to whether the Government or indeed anyone on the Committee, regardless of party, thinks that there is anything more complex than what is in a person’s mind—a mind that cannot be unlocked or opened. We can ask this person what was in their mind, but they want to be acquitted, so we must take a value judgment on whether they are telling the truth or not. Surely the most complex thing there can possibly be is what is in the mind of a human being. A very complex set of spreadsheets or cryptocurrency that only half of us understand is complicated, but there is perhaps nothing more complicated than the motivation and mindset of a human being.

That is specifically what juries are for—to make that sort of judgment on whether it was reasonable for someone to do something. That is why we have 12 members, so that they must come to a view unanimously, or certainly as a large majority. A judge is not in a more privileged position—no one would argue that they are—to decide what is and is not reasonable. They are in a more privileged position to make decisions about the law, and indeed they do make decisions about the law in jury trials and direct the jury on matters of law.

It is incredibly uncertain what “complexity” means. I know what the Minister thinks it means, and I do not criticise her. It is a perfectly reasonable view of what it means. My point is that it is not the only view. She thinks—I paraphrase; I do not seek to put words in her mouth—that it is complex financial evidence, presumably written evidence in many cases, in a fraud trial or crimes related to money. It is perfectly possible to have a great volume of evidence but, as the case unfolds, a detailed understanding of that paperwork may no longer be the issue on which the case turns. Does having a large volume of written evidence and a long list of witnesses make a case complex, or does it depend on what the witnesses might say or exactly what is in those papers?

The Minister has spoken about juries moving at the pace of the slowest member. Is her test for complexity the mindset of the slowest member of a random 12 selected from the British public, or is it the average—one might say reasonable—person? She could help judges making this decision by setting that out in the legislation.

This is not merely a theoretical, academic discussion on the criminal law of this country. I can point to another country. The Minister has taken pleasure in using other countries as examples to justify many provisions in the Bill, as though England and Wales can learn from other jurisdictions. I do not disagree with that premise. I will give her the example of New Zealand, another common-law jurisdiction. It has a similar provision, whereby a judge has to exercise a similar sort of decision making about whether a trial is likely to be “long and complex”, rather than its likely complexity. Set out in its legislation is a legal test. The Minister says that there is a test of complexity in the Bill. I tried to intervene on her to say that there is not.

This is what a test looks like. The law of New Zealand directs a judge to consider, in determining whether a case is likely to be long and complex,

“the number and nature of offences with which the defendant is charged”.

We understand what that means. It also directs them to consider

“the nature of the issues likely to be involved…the volume of the evidence likely to be presented”

and

“the imposition on potential jurors of sitting for the likely duration of the trial”.

It has a catch-all, which is not unusual in legal drafting:

“any other matters the court considers relevant.”

The judge in New Zealand has a test to apply: whether the case is likely to be long and complex. There is absolutely no reason why the Government could not have included a test in the Bill—it does not have to be the same test—to assist the court and give certainty, which would help defendants and victims and would improve efficiency.

--- Later in debate ---

To ensure that the bench trial is a tool of justice rather than of administrative convenience, we must mandate immediacy. We should not trade a system that works for one that merely looks faster, as I said earlier. Let the judge speak when the evidence is fresh and the parties are present. A verdict without immediate reasons is not streamlined justice; it is opaque, slow and intellectually suspect. If a trial without a jury is truly about efficiency, that efficiency must be visible and present in the room.

[Joe Robertson]

As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister pointed out, there are a number of problems that not only arise with what clauses 3 and 4 try to do, but carry over to clause 5, which tries to replicate aspects of jury trials in trials that will not be heard by a jury because a judge has made an allocation decision.

The problems with juries seem to be, as the Minister and the Government have articulated, time wasted through swearing in, the unpredictable nature of convening 12 people—with people sometimes dropping out—and the fact they can hear evidence only at certain times of the day, which makes the day for hearing evidence shorter. Of course, none of those things are new; they are things that have always existed with jury trials. Citing issues with juries that have existed since juries began, in order to deal with the more recent issue of backlogs, misses the point.

The Government have taken measures to deal with the more recent issues with criminal cases, including the fact that evidence inherently takes longer, although that is the same with evidence that a judge has to consider, and that cases have become more complex because of evidence and technology. That also is true of cases that are heard by a judge only. The Government have made plenty of complaints and shared plenty of views about what they think of the previous Government. They have spoken about under-investment and caps on sitting days, things that they say they have addressed through allocating more sitting days and investing in the legal system. Surely, that is the remedy for their complaints. However, they have not been prepared to spend the time to assess that remedy, to see whether the benefits in reducing the backlog will be felt in the coming months and years.

To take an inherent feature of the jury system—the jury itself—as a justification for doing away with it in certain cases because of more recent pressures for other reasons is neither logical nor fair. The problem with simply transferring all the provisions that would ordinarily happen in a jury trial to a trial that is decided by a judge alone, as clause 5 seeks to do, is that there are features of a jury system that cannot simply be replicated by a judge sitting alone. Let us remember that a jury decides the facts. It decides whether something happened and it decides what was in the mind of the defendant at the time in question. That is the preserve of the jury.

It is for the judge, even in a jury trial, to decide the law, to direct the jury—where appropriate—and to decide issues of procedure. Some of the procedural issues or arguments about evidence, including about whether evidence is admissible or not, are decided by the judge in the absence of the jury. The jury is sent out of the room. Of course, that can make the whole trial last longer, but there is a very good reason for it. It is because sometimes the arguments that are made—for example, arguments about the admissibility of certain evidence—are in themselves prejudicial to the decision maker of the facts, which is the jury, or prejudicial to the way that they might decide the case. A judge might need to hear the contested evidence, or at least hear what it is about to decide whether it is admissible.

A judge might decide that evidence is inadmissible because it is not relevant, or—this is where I go way beyond my legal expertise; I never practised as a criminal lawyer—because it might effectively prejudice the jury. We do not want the jury seeing that evidence, which is why they are out of the room. If the judge rules that the evidence is inadmissible, the jury come back into the room never having seen it, and the trial continues with the jurors’ minds unclouded by inadmissible evidence.

However, when the judge is also deciding the facts—that happens, of course in magistrates courts, where the magistrates decide the facts and are guided on the law by a legal professional sitting in front of them—and indeed when a judge is deciding the facts and the law, and procedural issues and issues of the admissibility of evidence, then, if they take separate arguments or separate submissions from the defence and prosecution on whether an item of evidence is admissible or not, and they decide that it is not admissible because it would cloud the judgment of the jury or confuse the issues of the main trial, they effectively have to pretend that they never heard that prejudicial evidence, having decided that it is prejudicial.

Judges are trained and professional, and have to do all this anyway in certain cases where a judge decides both—

[Sarah Sackman]

We have already covered a fair amount of the same ground. The example that I gave a couple of sittings ago was in relation to judges considering contempt of court applications, where they themselves would have seen the offending behaviour and have to make a determination about it. Judges are well used to dealing with these issues, both in the criminal context and the civil context. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that?

[Joe Robertson]

I accept that judges can do all this, and indeed sometimes do all this. Surely, however, the Minister will accept that, given human nature, there is a limit to the extent to which a human being can be so well trained or so professional that they can simply disregard something that they have heard as though they had never heard it. Indeed, that is one reason why we have jury trials. It is also one of the leading reasons why in more complex cases or longer cases—in cases involving murder, or sexual offences, or in all those cases that have to be heard by a jury—we have a jury. It is to separate the decision makers of fact from the decision makers of law and procedure.

[Dr Mullan]

As we are touching on these issues, those of us on the Opposition Benches are happy to say that we have to work harder on judicial accountability and decision making, and we are not afraid to say that we think it is better that juries do these things, because judges err.

There is an irony really, because at the heart of the Bill is another measure in relation to the powers that we give family court judges. My hon. Friend will know that the impact assessment says that the law at the moment basically says that judges already know—based on the law—that the welfare of the child comes before visitation rights. The Government accept that that is what the law says, but they do not trust judges to understand and accept that law. They want to introduce measures that further restrict judges’ decision making. The Government cannot have it both ways; they cannot introduce measures in the same Bill that are based on the idea that judges are not sufficiently enacting the law as written, and then say that we are wrong to have concerns about judicial decision making in these sorts of scenarios.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joe Robertson]

My hon. Friend the shadow Minister makes a good point, and we will get on to talking about the provisions relating to the family courts.

In relation to this particular provision, the family courts are where we have a judge making a decision on very emotive facts and on procedure. But family courts are far more collaborative in nature. A judge’s role is also about straining to find consensus. That is very different from the criminal courts where, ultimately, a judge or a jury, depending on who is hearing the case, has to make a yes-or-no decision on innocence or guilt. That has wide-ranging and profound impacts, which sometimes turn on a knife edge on hard-to-determine evidence. That is different from the family court, where the intention is to try and find consensus, rather than making those decisions.

Of course, juries are used in civil courts in some defamation cases. Again, it is where the value judgment on intention—why somebody made a statement about someone and whether they knew it to be false or not—of 12 ordinary people selected at random in this country is better than a judge’s decision making alone.

My issue with clause 5 is that it simply sweeps all sorts of provisions in a number of existing clauses of different legislation passed at different times into judge-only trials when those provisions were designed for jury-led trials. Unless I have misunderstood, that seems to have been done through a set of Government amendments and elements of existing law that were not envisaged on the first drafting of the Bill. That possibly demonstrates the slightly rushed and painful nature of how we are having to deal with this legislation, with so many loopholes and gaps in it.

I am happy to be discharging my duties, dissecting and scrutinising the Bill. I do not mind how long it takes because that is my job; it is why I am here and I am pleased to be doing it.

[Sarah Sackman]

On that final point, we are all delighted to be here and perform the function of Government properly. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Exactly, and the company of all Members is a delight, as always.

On a serious point, there is some suggestion that the Government are rushing the legislation through. I do not think that is right. Yes, the Government have a sense of urgency about gripping this problem. I make no apologies for that. The depth of the problem and the shameful delays demands that urgency, but it is not true to say that this is rushed legislation. We commissioned a two-part independent review of hundreds of pages. We took our time to consider how we would bring that forward in a pragmatic way that vindicated the evidence base that the IRCC had put together. Now we are scrutinising it in the usual and proper way, and it will take as long as it takes. I do not want the public to think that the integrity of the process is somehow compromised. I know it would not be under your chairship, Ms Butler.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Thank you, Ms Jardine, for taking the Chair as we continue this later sitting. Before we suspended, we were debating my amendment 53 to clause 6 in relation to the use of the negative procedure rather than the affirmative procedure to change sentencing powers. I was talking about the importance of considering the nature of the justice delivered in the magistrates court when making changes to the powers of that court. As I have said previously in Committee, the fact that we have some criticisms of elements of the magistrates court does not mean it should be got rid of—we accept that these must be balanced measures—but it is important for us to consider that when expanding its powers.

Critics, including the Criminal Bar Association, warn that extending summary justice to cases carrying two-year sentences is a recipe for what they describe as “rough justice”. The procedures in magistrates courts are streamlined. For example, the Government’s own impact assessment assumes that even these more serious trials will be completed in a matter of hours. Furthermore, there is a significant disparity in access to legal representation. The income threshold for legal aid in magistrates courts is much lower than in the Crown court. That means that a defendant who would have been eligible for a publicly funded lawyer in the Crown court might be forced to represent themselves in the magistrates court, even when facing a two-year prison sentence. If we are to allow a system where unrepresented defendants face longer custodial terms in shorter hearings, that decision must be subject to the highest level of parliamentary debate.

It is also worth noting that the Government’s proposals depart from the recommendations of the very review they claim to follow. Sir Brian Leveson, in his independent review of the criminal courts, recommended that the Government’s ability to amend magistrates’ sentencing powers by statutory instrument of any kind should actually be repealed. He suggested that the current 12-month maximum should be made permanent, rather than leaving it as a “variable” that the Executive can adjust.

Crucially, when we have previously raised the question of the Government varying from Sir Brian’s recommendations, the Minister has prayed in aid Sir Brian saying that the Government could go further in some circumstances. This could not be further from that. He said that the reforms he recommended were “contingent” on the Government also introducing a power to cap the sentences that could be passed by magistrates. The use of Sir Brian as evidence of opinions across the board is reaching farce now. We have the Government disagreeing with Sir Brian on whether there should be a judge and two magistrates, disagreeing with Sir Brian over the maximum sentence for triable either-way cases in the magistrates court, and now they are directly opposing what he wanted them to do in relation to magistrates’ sentencing powers.

It is important that we read what Sir Brian said:

“My strong recommendation is that the maximum should remain at 12 months. Furthermore, I recommend that the legislation be amended so that the Lord Chancellor no longer has the power to reduce the maximum to six months via a Statutory Instrument. The 12-month maximum should be made permanent.”

Here we have another example of the Government wanting us to set aside all our concerns about the erosion of jury trial rights on the basis of Sir Brian’s expertise and experience, at the same time as ignoring it themselves. If the Government intend to move in the opposite direction of expert legal advice, it is only reasonable that they be required to obtain explicit approval from Parliament through the affirmative procedure every time they seek to do so.

We must look at the cumulative impact of the Bill. While clause 6 increases the power of the magistrates courts at the front end, clause 7 restricts the right to appeal those decisions at the back end. The Bill replaces the automatic right of appeal and full rehearing with a permission-based model. That creates a clear and troubling shift: more power is being exercised at the lower level, while the ability to challenge those decisions is being constrained.

With around 40% of appeals against conviction from magistrates courts currently successful, it is clear that the system is correcting a meaningful level of error. Increasing sentencing powers while simultaneously narrowing the mechanisms for correcting those errors is a double blow to the rights of defendants. The combined effect makes it even more imperative that any increase in power is not snuck through via the negative procedure. As we have heard from other Members, there is a backlog in the magistrates courts of 379,000 cases. Anything that increases their workload will potentially have adverse consequences.

In summary, increasing the maximum sentence in magistrates courts is a major constitutional change that affects the liberty of the citizen. It is not a matter of administrative convenience that should be left to the fast track of the negative procedure. If the Government are confident that increasing the maximum to 18 or 24 months is the correct solution to the backlog, they should have no objection to making that case openly and seeking a positive vote of approval from both Houses.

We must ensure that our fundamental rights are not treated as administrative details to be checked off on a spreadsheet. For those reasons, I support the proposal that any future increase to magistrates’ sentencing powers must be subject to the affirmative procedure, as well as other amendments that seek to constrain the Government’s actions in this regard.

[Joe Robertson]

I support the position of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. There is a degree of cross-party support on the Opposition Benches; we heard some very good submissions from the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion, which seems a while ago now.

The Government’s position on many of the contentious issues in Committee has been anchored on Sir Brian Leveson’s report—indeed, why would it not be? It is an independent report that the Government commissioned. But they freely depart from his recommendations, seemingly on a whim, without any substantial justification. This is one of those cases. Sir Brian Leveson was very clear that magistrates should continue to have sentencing powers only up to a year, and the Government are effectively doubling those sentencing powers.

This is about more than just sentencing powers; it fundamentally changes what magistrates courts are for and how our criminal courts are structured. The Crown court, whether sitting with only a judge or with a jury, is for more serious cases, with more serious sanctions, because it is able to deal with levels of complexity, be it in relation to evidence or procedure. We have heard about “rough and ready” justice in the magistrates court. That is not a criticism; it is a way of characterising the absolute foundations of our magistrates courts. They do a huge amount of criminal work in this country, but they are meant to be summary courts; they are meant to be courts that act quickly and do not have the rigour or probity of the Crown courts. That is their particular purpose, and it is therefore right that they have always had limited sentencing powers when it comes to deciding whether to lock someone up. Fines and community orders are the sort of sentences that are far more typical of magistrates courts.

Depriving someone of their liberty is a very serious matter. It is one thing to deprive someone of their liberty for months, especially given that such sentences are often reduced—in practice, a year can be reduced to months—but it is another thing to deprive someone of their liberty for two years. That would suddenly make the magistrates courts’ summary-style justice, or rough justice—call it whatever; I do not mean any of those words as a criticism—incredibly inappropriate for the powers that the Government would like them to exercise. The clause therefore does much more than just fiddle with thresholds, or however the Government might want to characterise it—we will soon find out. It fundamentally alters what magistrates courts are for.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I remind the hon. Member that magistrates in the youth court are able to impose sentences of up to two years, and that in its written evidence, the Magistrates’ Association states that it asked for and welcomes the increase to up to 24 months in the sentencing powers of magistrates courts. Does he recognise that?

[Joe Robertson]

I recognise evidence, but I give greatest weight to Sir Brian Leveson, the author of the independent report commissioned by the Government. As the hon. Lady knows very well, the youth court is a very different beast, because a different set of principles and rules applies to cross-examination, evidence and so on for people who are of the age of minority. Simply to say that if the youth court can do it, then the magistrates court can do it for people over 18 is a slightly off-the-cuff argument, if I may say so; it does not really have any rigour at all.

Allow me to return to my line of argument about magistrates courts. If there is a genuine intention and belief that magistrates should be able to impose sentences of up to two years—as I say, in my view, that fundamentally changes the nature of the court—then that should be met with provisions that make the process in the magistrates court more rigorous. I would not agree with that, but at least it would hang together, show consistency and demonstrate an intention that justice must be delivered in a process that is commensurate with the sanction the state is looking to impose on someone.

There is no greater sanction in this country than depriving someone of their liberty and locking them up. In this case, it is more than a threshold argument; the Bill is fundamentally changing what magistrates courts are for, what Crown courts are for, and the difference in procedure between the two.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. Amendment 34 would ensure that the negative procedure—what I call the back route—cannot be used to allow magistrates courts to take away people’s rights for up to 24 months; it would require a proper debate and a vote in Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I rise to support the comments made by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester, about the importance of legal aid. There has already been a real reduction in the number of cases in which legal aid is given. Many defendants turn up at the magistrates court without any legal representation because of the constraints on legal aid. Bearing in mind that such defendants could now, if the Bill goes through, be facing up to 24 months imprisonment, it is important that legal aid provision is given to people facing custodial sentences. Means should not be the only element; an important thing to consider is whether somebody has a real chance of going into custody.

We have found historically—this may be anecdotal evidence—that defendants not getting legal representation at an early stage results in more delays. They often plead guilty right at the last stage, when the matter is set for trial. By then, six or eight months have passed, and they might have been able to save some money; or it has got into their head that they have to have this trial, so they try to raise some money. That causes delays. If people are guided, right at the beginning, as to what the evidence and the likely sentence are, they are more likely to plead guilty at an earlier stage.

The previous Government made significant cuts to legal aid. One of the arguments I remember raising then—this was more than 10 years ago, during the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—was that restricting legal aid would mean lots of unrepresented people turning up at court, and that that would delay the system. It is also fundamentally unfair. Someone facing a criminal charge should be able to access legal aid. I ask the Government to think about that, and perhaps extend legal aid and make it more generous.

[Joe Robertson]

This looks like another entirely reasonable amendment, which looks to mitigate some of the harsher provisions in the changes that will allow magistrates to give sentences of up to two years. A moment ago, I talked about the difference between the more rough and ready justice in the magistrates court and the more rigorous, lengthy and developed procedure, practice and ability to operate in the Crown court. When it comes to deciding the income threshold for whether a defendant qualifies for legal aid, surely the most important thing is not the process or procedure as such, but the harshness of the possible sanction that the state is looking to impose on that person.

Rather than looking at the £22,000 income threshold for magistrates courts and £37,500 for Crown courts, we could instead say that, if someone will be sentenced for up to one year, the income threshold is £22,000, and if someone will be sentenced for more than one year, it is £37,500. That is a true statement—that is how it currently stands. We should merely extend that principle, basing the figures on sentencing thresholds rather than on the venue that dishes out that sentence. That would achieve fairness, so that if somebody might be locked up for two years, they have the legal might and can afford the legal advice to defend themselves and articulate a case in a more professional manner. If having a legal professional does not give someone at least the chance of delivering that in a more professional manner, there is plainly little point in the legal profession.

That is the rationale, and the Government do not have to apply a different principle at all if they just see the current threshold as applying to a one-year sentence rather than to venue. This delivers again on other amendments, not only from others on these Benches but from the shadow Minister, and it allows the Government to deliver what they want to deliver. It does not run against the principle of what the Government are trying to do, even though Conservative Members have differences of opinion on that. It merely perfects, improves and cures some of the defects and unintended consequences of the Bill. The entire reason that the Bill Committee sits is to seek to do that, but time and again, the Government would prefer to just vote things down and use their majority rather than taking the time to look at provisions that seem to me objectively reasonable.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

Another good thing we can do in Committee is try to clarify the Conservative party’s position. Is the hon. Member’s position now that the almost 40% cuts to legal aid during the last Conservative Government were wrong? If so, would he like to apologise for them?

[Joe Robertson]

This is a strange venue to ask for an apology for previous Government legislation from an MP who, like me, has been in this place for less than two years. The hon. Gentleman and I were on broadcast media yesterday; that might have been a better venue for him to ask me to apologise, but I would have rejected his invitation at that time, and I will certainly reject it in Committee. This is not about previous Governments’ views or opinions; it is about the views and opinions of this Parliament.

[Dr Mullan]

This happens all the time. We point out deficiencies in the Government’s position, so Members get their Whips’ handouts with suggestions to “just point out to them what they did on x, y and z.” But the public do not care. That is a zero defence of their position—[Interruption.]

[Dr Mullan]

I will be quick. The public care about the Government’s justification for what they are doing, not what we have done. If the Government are leaning on what we have done in the past, it shows how weak their arguments are.

[Joe Robertson]

Indeed, it is quite interesting that the Government’s benchmark is the previous Government. I do not recall them making that clear at the last election. I will leave it there.

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 22 tabled by the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester. This is another element of the Bill that will not survive contact with the Lords. It is quite clearly unfair.

I want to pick up on some of the points that were made. There are key reasons why the amendment is sensible. In other parts of the debate, Government Members have raised the negative impact of cross-examination by defendants, which they do not think is a good thing. They do not think it is a good thing that victims may be cross-examined by defendants, yet they will not support a measure that would reduce the risk of that happening, and it does happen. The context of all the different parts of the clause is important to bear in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

Because of that cocktail of measures—extending sentencing powers in the magistrates, not addressing the disparity in legal aid between the two courts and restricting the right to appeal—clause 6 should not stand part of the Bill, and I will be voting against it.

[Joe Robertson]

The central issue here, as with so much of this, is the impact that a single provision, or a single intention—in this case clause 6—has on other areas of the criminal justice system, and indeed provisions in the Bill. There is a lot of interplay between clauses 6 and 7—we are about to discuss clause 7, so I will save my comments on that for a few minutes’ time.

The central issue is the unintended consequence, yes, but also the other provisions that Parliament will not get to debate. In this case, Parliament will not get a proper opportunity to debate the fairness of having magistrates courts sentencing up to two years, because the clause effectively creates a power for the Secretary of State to do that job instead. That is why this Committee is having to debate whether it is right that a summary court should suddenly have the power to sentence someone up to two years.

The Government can argue that at least some of the provisions that the Opposition do not agree with are anchored somewhere in Sir Brian Leveson’s report. I would argue that this provision is specifically argued out by Sir Brian Leveson. Indeed, he talked about it being contingent on the magistrates court continuing to have sentencing powers of up to only one year. When the Government appear, in my view, to be doing something that specifically runs against Sir Brian Leveson’s report, rather than is simply absent from it, they need to explain their position. It is not good enough to run the same old arguments. The central argument in all this seems to be efficiency. How much will the Government sacrifice at the altar of efficiency? Efficiency cannot trump all, and certainly not the justice arguments already made by me and others, which I will not repeat.

If the Government cannot explain where these provisions have come from, when they run counter to Sir Brian Leveson’s report, they should rightly submit these proposals through a proper procedure so that they can be debated by Parliament, rather than just giving a power to the Secretary of State.

As I say, I will restrict my comments to the interplay between clause 6 and clause 7, which restricts the right of appeal. We have already heard some good arguments about legal aid, and it does not do much for the Minister, who is quite exercised by the previous Government’s record on legal aid. This is about not necessarily increased funding for legal aid—she says she is doing that already—but the right to it when the state is trying to lock someone up.

[Dr Mullan]

If people end up being seen in the magistrates court when under the old measures they would have been in the Crown court, there will be lengthier trials and, potentially, a more expensive legal aid bill. It may not necessarily even be an issue of resource; it is just about making sure that legal aid follows the cases where they are being heard, which may well even save money.

[Joe Robertson]

That is entirely right but, of course, we do not know, because the assessments in respect of the Bill are so light—there is not one on that point. It may or may not at all mean more spending. So many times, the argument on this issue, and on many others, is, “Oh, it doesn’t affect that many cases,” or, “Don’t worry.” Well, it deeply affects the person whose case it is. If a defendant wants to exercise the right that the Government are pulling away, it is hardly an argument for the Government to say, “Well, we’re not pulling that right away from very many people.” For that defendant, the right has been lost.

The same applies to the argument when it is about victims or complainants. The Government are rightly willing to focus an argument on individual victims; they should be prepared to do that for the individual defendants who will lose rights and, in the case of sentences of up to two years, may suddenly no longer be able to access legal aid because the regime is focused on the venue rather than on sentencing power. That should be adjusted not because of what previous Governments have done, but because this Government are moving the goalposts on sentencing powers in the magistrates court, so they should make the matching adjustment when it comes to qualifying for legal aid. For that reason, I do not agree with clause 6.

[Rebecca Paul]

It is a pleasure to start the day with you and end the day with you, Ms Jardine. I am sure you are very much enjoying starting your day with me and ending your day with me, too. [Laughter.] I have just realised how that can be interpreted. My apologies, Ms Jardine; I cannot account for the minds of other Members.

To get back to business, I do not support clause 6 standing part of the Bill. It will expand the Government’s existing power to increase the maximum custodial sentence that a magistrates court can impose for a single either-way offence. The current maximum is 12 months, but the clause will permit Ministers, entirely at their own discretion, to increase that to 18 months or even 24 months. That will affect consecutive sentencing for multiple either-way offences.

The Government have justified the change on the basis that the power is needed so that sentencing limits can be adjusted swiftly to rebalance work between the magistrates courts and the Crown court. The Government estimate that increasing the maximum to 18 months would save 8,000 Crown court sitting days. That all sounds rather neat but, in reality, it is another example of the Government trying to force more serious criminal business into a part of the system designed for swift, relatively low-level justice, and doing so before they have properly shown that the courts can absorb it or that the benefits are worth it.

The first and perhaps most important point is that even Sir Brian Leveson did not recommend the change. Sir Brian said that his recommendation on restricting the right to elect trial by jury was

“contingent upon magistrates’ sentencing powers remaining at the current maximum of 12 months.”

He also recommended that the Government’s ability to amend magistrates’ sentencing powers by statutory instrument be repealed, and that the current 12-month maximum be made permanent.

Clause 6 therefore cannot be said to follow Leveson: it goes beyond him and, on this point, directly contradicts him. That is a serious weakness in the Government’s position. Ministers have repeatedly leaned on Leveson when defending the Bill as a whole, but in this instance he gave no endorsement of what clause 6 will usher in. More than that, he warned us directly against it. It is perfectly valid to ask, “If the very review on which the Government say the Bill is based said that 12 months should remain the ceiling, why are Ministers now seeking the power to raise it to two years?”

Let me briefly touch on a second common-sense point. The move from six to 12 months took effect only for offenders convicted on or after 18 November 2024. In other words, the current system has barely had time to bed in and the Government are already asking Parliament to authorise a further jump to 18 or 24 months. The earlier increase to 12 months was justified as a response to court pressures, and the Government said it would save up to 2,000 sitting days. We have not had anything like enough time to assess properly how that change has worked in practice before Ministers seek power to go dramatically further.

If the Government and the Minister wish to make evidence-based law, they should first show Parliament what the 12-month expansion has actually done: what kinds of cases have been retained, what sentencing patterns have changed, what effect there has been on appeals, what impact there has been on magistrates courts and whether the claimed savings have materialised. Instead, they are asking, through clause 6, for a much broader delegated power, and inviting us to trust that this will all somehow work out later. That is not good enough where a question as fundamental as the administration of good justice is concerned.

The Bar Council puts its objection crisply and, I think, rightly. It says:

“Summary trial is designed for the purpose of dispensing swift justice in low-level cases. The extension of summary justice to cases in which a defendant could receive up to 2 years’ imprisonment…particularly when combined with the removal of a right to elect Crown Court trial, and the removal of a right of automatic appeal”

amounts to a

“comprehensive rolling back of safeguards.”

That is blunt language, but it is hard to disagree with.

Clause 6 will change the kind of cases that summary justice is expected to absorb. The Law Society warns that under the clause magistrates will have the power to impose lengthy custodial sentences for serious offences such as actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm and possession with intent to supply drugs

“in proceedings that are intended to be quicker”

and less formal than than those in the Crown Court. It warns that this raises the likelihood that

“people will receive longer custodial sentences with fewer safeguards or opportunities to rectify wrongful convictions.”

I will dwell on this point for a moment, as it is something that none of us who have been tasked with scrutinising the Bill in detail should forget. A system designed to be faster, simpler and less formal is being asked to shoulder cases in which the consequences are far more severe. Two years in prison is not some trivial matter: a custodial sentence like that can cost a person their job, their home, their family life, their good name and their future. A justice system that is appropriate for low-level offending cannot be assumed fit for cases that carry that sort of life­changing penalty.

There is then the practical point that clause 6 will not solve the pressure in the system so much as move it around. The change will merely transfer the burden from one overstretched part of the system to another. The Law Society says that the magistrates court already has its own backlog of more than 370,000 cases, and that the Government have shown no convincing plan to deal with the added pressure brought by more serious and complex cases.

JUSTICE makes the same point, and adds an especially telling practical detail drawn from the Institute for Government’s analysis: since magistrates’ sentencing powers were increased from six to 12 months in 2024, only around 30% of sentences in the six-to-12-month band were handed down by magistrates. That suggests a lack of confidence, or a continuing tendency to send more serious cases upwards, which in turn means the Government’s projected savings may not materialise in anything like the way they hope.

If magistrates are already not retaining all the cases that the Government assumed they would after the jump to 12 months, what is the evidence that authorising 18 or 24 months will suddenly transform the position? If cases continue to be sent up, or bounce between jurisdictions, the supposed efficiency gain becomes much more doubtful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joe Robertson]

The way my hon. Friend articulates the point suggests that the rules are effectively stripping people of the right to legal aid by pushing them down from a court where they currently qualify into a court where they do not. Is that a fair way to characterise it?

[Rebecca Paul]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Frankly, I am shocked that a Labour Government would do that. It is the last thing I expected of a Labour Government.

[Joe Robertson]

I am not shocked by anything a Labour Government do.

[Rebecca Paul]

Perhaps I am more optimistic about these things.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Huge apologies for my lateness, Sir John. I wish to speak in support of new clause 2 and lend my support to new clauses 6, 23 and 25, all of which seek to honour the commitment that the Government made in their manifesto at the last election. I have huge admiration for the hon. Member for Warrington North, both for her courageous and clear speech on Second Reading and for tabling new clause 2, which seeks to honour that commitment. I am heartened by how many Labour Members have added their names to the new clause, and I hope that the Government will listen.

New clause 2, which is detailed, would introduce specialist courts. It sets out the different ways in which guidance can deal with the difficulties that courts currently have in dealing with issues such as coercive control and honour-based abuse, and would make sure that the courts deliver justice in a timely and compassionate way. It is so important that we look at the many practical ways of dealing with the cases that we need to hear, for victims of domestic violence and sexual offences, that do not completely remove the right to select a jury trial, as the Minister has admitted the Bill will do, and that do not adjust the thresholds in courts so as to effectively abolish the centuries-old principle of jury equity. That principle is important to our democratic right to protest and to protect our fellow citizens from unjust prosecution, including by authoritarian or tyrannical future Governments.

The new clauses in this group outline how much can be done to make court processes support victims in a practical, kinder and more compassionate way. They would make the processes more trauma-informed, and more effective and just, as they would bring more successful prosecutions in cases of sexual and domestic violence. I also support new clauses 8 to 10, which would mandate training in such matters and which we will discuss later.

A goal of the Government’s reforms is to increase speed, and the new clauses would achieve that by focusing specialist courts on these important cases. We have debated extensively the many other practical measures that could speed up justice more generally and clear the backlog, which is getting in the way of far too many of these cases.

I really hope that the Government are listening and that we can vote on these issues today. I hope they will go away and listen more to the victims groups that are determined to put forward practical measures to deal with these things without affecting our fundamental rights, and introduce clauses that will do that—and remove clauses 1 to 7—on Report. That is the right thing to do. The issues have been laid out clearly during the Committee’s debates, and the Government now have an important choice to make.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I too support the new clauses, and I concur with a lot of what has already been said about the reasons for supporting them. I will make a couple of wider points on the merits of specialist rape courts and courts for sexual offences.

There is nothing wrong with the legal system in this country when it comes to the fundamental principles of trying these crimes—that someone is innocent until proven guilty, that they have a right to be heard in court, and that evidence must be tested rigorously, as is the right of a defendant in any case. The issue is how that is applied in the way our courts operate in respect of a set of crimes that are extremely sensitive because of the impact on the complainant—the victim—who is almost always a live witness. It is trying to deal with the operation of the court that is at issue here.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Me again. The new clauses would require provision for the training of the judiciary and, under new clause 30, for court staff. Each of these clauses focuses on a different area. New clause 8 focuses on discrimination against ethnic minorities, including racial bias and the impact on judicial decision making. New clause 9 requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on violence against women and girls. New clause 10 requires the provision of training for the judiciary focused on domestic abuse. New clause 30 requires the Lord Chancellor to ensure that all members of court staff working in the criminal justice system receive mandatory and consistent training on trauma-informed practices, to improve understanding of how trauma affects victims’ experience, behaviour and engagement with court proceedings.

The reasons for the new clauses—they are tabled for basically every part of justice legislation—are that there is real frustration among organisations and charities working in the criminal justice space that Parliament does not have the ability to legislate for the judiciary to have mandatory training. How do we square the circle of all those campaign organisations sounding the alarm and saying that, in order for us to make these very serious changes in moving to judge-alone trials, we must ensure that judges approach them with trauma-informed practices in mind?

That was raised in the evidence session by Farah Nazeer from Women’s Aid. When we asked her, “What would you need to see in order for this Bill to give you the confidence that victims will have a better experience and women will be better supported through the criminal justice system?” she said:

“One is training for the entirety of the court staff, because the stories that we hear and the experiences that we support women and children through are frankly appalling. The staff are not trauma-informed and there is no understanding of what a victim is going through. The courts are weaponised and survivors are brought back to the courts repeatedly. It is an appalling process. No policy area that you work on at Women’s Aid is a picnic, but this is the worst.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 27, Q53.]

In the same evidence session, Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner, said:

“I have made that point for years, regardless of these reforms. We have to improve and get reassurance around judicial training, including training on cultural competency, on understanding bias and prejudice and on the dynamics of abuse. We still see issues around coercive control, post-separation abuse and stalking. I need to be reassured that judges are being trained to the level that will give assurances to victims and to myself that they understand what is coming in front of them.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 14, Q25.]

I know that there has been significant progress, and that the organisation Fair Hearing has worked closely with the judiciary to do training about violence against women and girls and to make sure that judges are trauma-informed in their practice, but it is not mandatory. One comment that stuck with me from the evidence session was from Charlotte, one of the victims who presented evidence. She noted, of her judge:

“She said that, because I waited eight months to report, I was unreliable, and that I had clearly spoken to other victims of domestic abuse, so I knew what to say. Those comments really stuck by me.”––[Official Report, Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee, 25 March 2026; c. 26, Q51.]

The very concept that a judge looks at somebody who is trying to share their experiences and says, “Well, they’ve just trained for this,” is pretty appalling. It causes me to doubt that all judges are engaging in the judiciary training as effectively as they could be.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

I seek clarity on whether the new clause would apply to all judges or just to those in the criminal courts. In the family court the idea is to bring in expertise around the sort of issues that she talks about from agencies—such as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and even social services—in which there are lots of trained people, but that system does not always ensure that the judge is best placed to make a good decision, as we have seen in evidence. Will the hon. Lady clarify that point?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The feeling of the organisations and charities that I have spoken to is that everybody in the judiciary should have the opportunity to go through trauma-informed training and training around violence against women and girls, around coercive control and around recognising and identifying racial bias so we can make sure that every victim is confident—whether they are going through the criminal or the family justice system—that everybody they will come in contact with understands them and the additional support that they may require.

I am sure that the Minister will say that the Government cannot mandate training because the judiciary are independent. New clause 30 aims to make sure that members of court staff, who are employed by His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, receive mandatory and consistent training on trauma-informed practice because they are the people who will support victims and witnesses through the criminal justice system. We clearly need to change our approach. In the evidence session, witnesses described an environment that is hostile to witnesses; we need one that stands up for their interests. Our new clause 30 should be the bare minimum across the courts estate, and represents a position supported by a number of organisations.