Criminal Courts: Independent Review

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I begin by warmly congratulating my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this important debate. He set out with characteristic thoughtfulness the context for today’s discussion: the pressures facing our criminal courts and the enormous impact on victims, as a number of Members pointed out, and the far-reaching recommendations in Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts. My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to say that the House should have a meaningful opportunity to examine the principles at stake and the implications of the reforms.

Turning to the Leveson review, I acknowledge the serious intent with which Sir Brian approached the task. His report contains thoughtful proposals: consistency in the use of out-of-court disposals; updating legal aid to better recognise work done at plea and trial preparation hearings, as has been pointed out; and changes to permission to appeal, giving more options for defendants to elect to have a judge-led trial. But several recommendations raised profound constitutional and practical concerns. Sir Brian proposes removing the right to elect to have a jury trial for some 220 offences and allowing more judge-only trials in the Crown court. He also recommends raising the sentence discount for an early guilty plea from one third to 40%. At the heart of this debate is a simple but serious problem. The approach to the problem is being tackled the wrong way round.

Sir Brian Leveson’s part 1 report focuses on radical reform proposals, as I have discussed, to do with jury trials, discounts for guilty pleas and creating a new Crown court bench division. Yet the efficiency review, part 2 of Sir Brian’s work, which will look at technology, workforce capacity, case progression and the better use of the court estate, has not even been published. We are being asked to consider endorsing fundamental structural change, including the curtailing of a centuries-old constitutional right, without seeing the full picture. The Government will struggle to build support for changes that should only be considered as a last resort, when they have not even set out the full range of options before us, and we cannot consider such a Bill in isolation. The proposals for early discounts for guilty pleas would sit alongside plans to let offenders serve only one third of their custodial sentences. What a mockery of justice that would make. In fact, the vast majority of what Sir Brian himself identifies as necessary to address the backlog can be achieved without altering the constitutional foundations of our courts. He is clear that we should focus on maximising sitting days, using the existing judiciary and estate to their full potential, and improving case management.

Those who have experience of Government—such as the sponsoring Member of this debate, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam—will recognise that there is a real risk that, in setting out to create a whole new Crown court bench division, as proposed in part 1, we would divert both ministerial and judicial energy away from the urgent task of improving and expanding the capacity that we already have. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), has highlighted that it will require some 6,000 more magistrates, a point also echoed by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne).

Establishing new structures consumes time, money and management focus that should instead be directed towards using every courtroom and sitting day available to reduce the backlog that is paralysing the system. The backlog in the Crown court is now up 10% from when this Government took office just over a year ago. It has increased by 2% since March alone, when it first passed 75,000. Since Labour entered office in July 2024, the backlog has grown by more than 7,400 cases.

The former Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), claimed that she had taken every possible measure to tackle the backlog, but the facts tell a very different story. In August 2024, the judiciary confirmed that they could sit for up to 113,000 days in 2024-25, yet the then Justice Secretary chose not to fund that capacity. Instead, she initially supported only an additional 500 sitting days in September and then a further 2,000 in December—a drip by drip increase in capacity.

The Government deliberately decided not to fund the courts to sit at full capacity, leaving 4,500 potential sitting days on the table. The Lady Chief Justice took the extraordinary step of telling the Justice Committee that the initial decision to limit Crown court sitting days had,

“frankly had a drastic effect across the board”

causing the “most distressing time” for victims and staff alike.

Even after facing this public criticism, the former Justice Secretary’s response was inadequate. In March 2025, the Ministry of Justice announced that the total would rise to 110,000 sitting days, still below the full 113,000 available. So much for every possible measure.

Sir Brian’s report is clear: the most important step is to add 20,000 extra sitting days per year, reaching 130,000. That would mean tens of thousands more victims finally receiving justice in a timely manner. It requires commitment across the system, but above all, leadership from Government. Instead of focusing on efficiency and capacity, Ministers risk being sidetracked by structural reform.

Part 2 of the review will show how to achieve efficiencies through technology, leadership and better use of the estate. Yet the Government seem intent on pressing ahead with reforms that water down key rights before those recommendations are even known. Whatever the Government might say, the Conservatives in office had to tackle the single biggest barrier to the delivery of justice when the pandemic hit. Labour Members would be taking the public for fools if they think they can convince them—given their record in government so far—that it would all have been different under them. Prior to the pandemic, we actually got the backlog down lower than the level it had been during Labour’s previous period in office.

We inherited a backlog of 47,000 cases and got that down to 39,000 before the pandemic hit. During the pandemic we kept jury trials running, a decision that the Labour Opposition supported at the time. We opened and extended 20 Nightingale courts, appointed 1,000 additional judges and raised the judicial retirement age. We also allocated £220 million for the modernisation and repair of court buildings and, crucially, removed the cap on Crown court sitting days—something Labour has still not done in its period in office.

In just 15 months under Labour, we have seen drift and indecision. Despite inheriting a recovery plan, Ministers have allowed the backlog to worsen, as I have outlined. Even Sir Brian acknowledges that curtailing jury trials would only at best have a limited effect on the backlog, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) and other Members, and in fact represents just 0.2% of the Department’s budget. That is a negligible return for an erosion of centuries of civic participation in justice.

The better course is clear: make full use of existing court capacity, build greater capacity, employ modern case management tools and strengthen the legal profession’s ability to progress cases swiftly, not rewrite our constitutional settlement. We will continue to make that case as any legislation is brought before this House.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Sarah Sackman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing a debate on this crucial subject, and for the typical expertise and measured, analytical tone that he brings to it. I thought, until the speech of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), that something of a consensus had broken out among us. To quote the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, “something must be done about it”—I think we can all agree on that.

In the opening words of part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s review, he tells us that

“Criminal justice is in crisis.”

Indeed, it is. This Government inherited a record and rising courts backlog. As of June 2025, the open Crown court caseload stood at over 79,000 cases and it is rising. Other hon. Members have spoken to the human impact of that. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) for raising her constituent’s case. It is a graphic illustration of the impact of the Crown court backlog bequeathed to us by the previous Government, and particularly the impact of the appalling delays on victims.

The backlog not only places a psychological strain on victims, disrupting their ability to function, work and maintain relationships; it corrodes justice, because many of those victims—and indeed witnesses—pull out of the process, meaning that trials become ineffective. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam said, it also has an impact on defendants—those who are accused of a crime—as well as on our prisons, and on all those who serve within the system. It creates increasingly perverse incentives to exploit the delays and ultimately undermines the public’s confidence in justice. As many hon. Members have said, justice delayed is justice denied.

I reject the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle that this Government have sat idly by. Far from it. We inherited a crisis, in both our prisons and our courts, and we have gripped that crisis. It is a fact that, as of today, the Government have added record, historic numbers of sitting days for our courts: 5,000 sitting days more than the number allocated by the previous Government. As other hon. Members have pointed out, we have invested in the workforce crucial to running our criminal courts, and in our solicitors, with an additional £92 million in legal aid on top of a £24 million investment in our duty solicitors. We also, of course, commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, one of our greatest jurists, to undertake his review. If the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle had bothered to read beyond the first couple of paragraphs of the 388-page report—

[Dr Mullan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Sackman]

I will conclude my point, then give way.

Sir Brian tells us that “greater financial investment”—which by the way, the Government have already begun to make—

“on its own, without systemic reform, cannot solve this crisis.”

That is a premise that the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam set out in his remarks, and it is absolutely right. We cannot sit our way out of this crisis. Of course, additional sitting days are part of the solution but, as Sir Brian Leveson and his team have told us, greater financial investment—namely sitting days on their own, without systemic reform—cannot solve the crisis. The Government will heed that lesson.

[Dr Mullan]

Just for information, I have read the whole report and it does not do the Minister justice, given her usual, sensible approach, to suggest that the fact I and many other hon. Members, including some in her own party, do not agree with her means that we have not read the report.

[Sarah Sackman]

I am delighted to hear that the hon. Member has read the report. I was not seeking to politicise the discussion. It sounded like, in many respects—other than the issue of jury trials, to which I will turn in due course—there had been an outbreak of consensus that something needed to be done. I want to draw attention to the central premise of Sir Brian Leveson’s report: that, in and of itself, greater financial investment—which of course is a necessary ingredient—will be insufficient to dig our way out of this crisis.

Grip is needed, and it is grip that the Government are showing. Three strands are required. One is investment. That is a question of the number of sitting days. As I said, we are setting record numbers of sitting days. That requires investment in our workforce and, as other hon. Members have pointed out, investment in the infrastructure of justice—investment in the court estate.