Courts and Tribunals Bill

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Nick Timothy]

I will not give way.

Of course, when the Justice Secretary’s predecessor, the Home Secretary, commissioned Sir Brian Leveson to conduct a review of the criminal courts, she knew what she was doing, because in an earlier review Sir Brian had already said that jury trials should be restricted, with magistrates deciding the mode of trial and appeals made to a circuit judge. Perhaps the Justice Secretary sees this, like the early release scheme, as another hospital pass from his predecessor, who like the hardened criminals she let out of prison early, got out of the MOJ before facing the consequences of her actions. If he does think that, he should not feel that he has to go ahead with it.

Yet here the Justice Secretary is today proposing not only what Sir Brian Leveson recommended, but an even more radical change. He is telling the House that he has no choice but to rush this very serious legislation through Parliament at breakneck speed. The Bill was published less than two weeks ago, after no consultation at all, and today he is already asking hon. Members to approve its Second Reading. He is allowing only five days for Members to scrutinise the Bill line by line in Committee. That is less than the Government allowed for the Railways Bill, the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill and the Pension Schemes Bill. It is about the same time the House once spent scrutinising the Salmon Act 1986, which introduced the offence of handling salmon in suspicious circumstances. It is less time than the 44 debates, statements and urgent questions this House has heard on Israel, Palestine and Lebanon since the election.

We are not talking about legislating to recognise the sentience of crustacea or regulate travelling circuses; we are talking about a fundamental change to our constitution, the operation of our courts and the rights of our people. In the words of His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC, this Bill is

“one of the most radical and revolutionary events in English legal history. Yet it has not appeared in any manifesto; it has not been put out for consultation; it has not been recommended by Leveson”.

He says that it

“has been ‘published’ with virtually no notice to anyone”.

What arrogance, Madam Deputy Speaker—what a disgrace!

If this Bill had been the subject of consultation and this Justice Secretary had spent any time listening to judges, lawyers and the public, he would know that it will fail on its own terms. He says that it will deliver justice for more victims, but in Canada and Australia—jurisdictions he cites as an inspiration—judge-only trials have seen more acquittals than jury trials. Indeed, the impact assessment predicts that fewer people will go to prison as a result of these changes. That should be no surprise: asking judges sitting alone to take responsibility for depriving somebody of their liberty is far more onerous than asking 12 fellow citizens who can discuss the evidence, argue the case and share the burden between them.

A corresponding danger to justice is posed by the proposals to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers to two years and to limit the right to appeal their rulings. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) said earlier, no fewer than 40% of appeals against verdicts and 47% of appeals against sentences issued by magistrates are successful. Incredibly, the Justice Secretary seemed to suggest just now that these figures are not a cause for concern, but a cause for celebration.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

On appeals against magistrates’ rulings, is the shadow Minister aware—as I am, through my experience—that appeals are essentially a retrial in the magistrates court, and that many appeals are successful simply because the victim cannot face giving evidence for a second time and being retraumatised? Defendants will use that to retraumatise the victim all over again, particularly in circumstances where there is domestic abuse.

[Nick Timothy]

I do not accept that characterisation of magistrates courts. If that were a true cause for concern for the hon. Lady, this Bill would perhaps try to address what she says, yet it does not.

The Government’s claims about what the Bill will achieve are hopelessly confused. The Justice Secretary leans heavily on Sir Brian Leveson, who says that limiting jury trials will save 20% of court time, but there has been no modelling to justify this number, and Sir Brian has admitted that it is little more than a guess. When challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), the Justice Secretary said,

“We will…publish our modelling alongside the…Bill”.—[Official Report, 3 February 2026; Vol. 780, c. 109.]

Yet no modelling worthy of the name has been published. The impact assessment takes Sir Brian’s guess and uses it as the median estimate. This is fiction masquerading as science.

The Criminal Bar Association calls the impact assessment “meaningless verbiage”, “total gibberish” and something that

“would make the script writer of ‘In the Thick of it’ wince with embarrassment”.

It concludes:

“If anyone can make any sense of this, please get in touch.”

If the Justice Secretary wanted to accept that invitation right now, I would be willing to give way to him—but he does not.

The Government have overstated the length of trials for cases in scope of the proposed change by more than 100%. The better estimate has been made by the Institute for Government, where researchers have listened to judges and lawyers and understood that only 20% of Crown court time is spent trying either-way offences. Of course, half of those cases will remain jury trials because the likely sentence is above three years. The cases in scope therefore take up only 5% to 10% of Crown court time, so even if they could be tried 20% faster, it would save only 1% or 2% of court time.

[Nick Timothy]

My right hon. and learned Friend is exactly right. I was planning to turn to that point, because the Bill creates a problem not only in the burden of time it creates, but in the politicisation of our judiciary.

The Bill does create new time burdens. When juries deliberate, judges do other work in court, including on other trials. If judges deliberate instead, the court time used to hear other cases is lost. Because a defendant’s right to a jury trial will depend on the likely custodial sentence if he is found guilty, if the Bill becomes law, a judge will, for the first time, be needed to first conduct a hearing to determine the likely sentence. The Bill says that the parties involved should make representations; in cases with several defendants, the judge would need to hear from all their representatives and the prosecutor, taking up hours of time. There is more: defendants often plead guilty after the plea and trial preparation hearing, but before trial. In these cases, the sentencing judge—possibly not the same as the allocating judge—will have to hear the submissions all over again.

Then there are the reasons for conviction or acquittal, as my right hon. and learned Friend has just said. Juries do not have to provide reasons, but the Bill says that judges must. That will inevitably take many hours per case—time that right now is used to try cases.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nick Timothy]

I will make some progress.

This opens up new risks. The publication of judges’ reasons is likely to lead to more appeals and more court time being taken up. As questions are posed about judges’ reasons, we are likely to see the politicisation of judges and judicial appointments—something that will be made worse by the blurring of our adversarial model and the European inquisitorial role of judges. Under our model, judges are entitled to intervene and seek further information to help the jury with their assessment; in a judge-only trial, where the judge inevitably takes on a more inquisitorial role, those interventions and requests will inevitably be portrayed as the display of bias.

This will be made worse when it comes to the role of the judge in deciding on the admissibility of evidence. A judge usually sees all manner of material that is prejudicial to the defendant but deemed inadmissible, which does not matter when it is a jury who decides innocence or guilt. When a judge sees prejudicial material and deems it inadmissible, however, it will be difficult for anybody to believe that the information was simply erased from their mind. Judges may be professional and fully committed to their impartiality, but they are not superhuman.

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[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

When I was working for a living as a building worker, rather than being here, if there was a backlog of work, we were told to work through the night and at weekends, and on not very much additional pay. I wonder how it is that, today in our country, one tenth of all the courts are not even sitting, despite the backlog that the Deputy Prime Minister has told us about and many others have spoken about. Why is it that, when there is a backlog, manual workers, as I was, are made to work hard, and rightly so, to catch up, but the barristers, judges, solicitors and all the other accoutrements of a court are simply told, “Well, we’ll make it easier for you by reducing the amount of jury trials that are going to be held.” It is rather odd.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No. I have only five minutes, and I will have to move fast.

The Deputy Prime Minister did convince me, and I am sure all of us, that there is a backlog, and it is not reasonable or fair, in terms of justice, that people should wait so long. Obviously, today we have heard some very powerful speeches from victims that reinforce the case. However, he has not shown to my satisfaction that the cause of the backlog is the juries. In fact, there is much evidence to show that they have a marginal impact at the most. The cause of the backlog is all sorts of things, including the failure of the courts to meet for long enough hours, as other working people have to do all over the country.

Let me reflect for a moment—in a sense, going back to the basics—on why juries are in place, and I think it is to do with the fact that the Crown has the power, uniquely, to imprison people and deprive them of their liberty. No other organisation has that massively powerful capacity. The point is that, in a case where the Crown—or the Government, acting on behalf of the Crown—is operating in an unreasonable, unfair or even oppressive way, what the person facing imprisonment has is the jury system. Twelve people drawn from the citizenry of our country at random are able to speak together and make a final decision about whether the Crown has made out the case that that person should be imprisoned. That is a fundamental part of our constitutional system, and the idea that we should begin to abandon it is mistaken. Some hon. Members have said today that we have done similarly in the past, but making mistakes in the past does not at all justify continuing to make mistakes in the present. I have not heard the case made that juries are a bad thing in principle, although we are reducing them.

One further point I want to raise is the question of how the backlog occurred. Again, no one has made the case that the backlog occurred because of some sort of permanent, strategic problem with the way our judicial system works. It is the product of a series of cuts by Governments of both parties, to be honest, and of a number of failures—there was privatisation, and all sorts of other issues. If those changes are contingent, rather than permanent, and a temporary problem that can be resolved, why are we destroying an element of the jury system? If the Deputy Prime Minister had said that the world and the country had changed, and that our way of looking at the judicial system had to be reformed, he might have had a case, although I would not necessarily agree with it. However, he has not said that. He has said that this is a contingent problem.

When I was working for a living, I regularly used a ratchet—I do not know if the DPM has ever used one. A ratchet is a device that moves in only one direction. In the jury system, citizens have had, over centuries, a ratchet that gives protection from an oppressive Government. If the Deputy Prime Minister had come to the House and said that he was going to do some things that were extraordinary but temporary, to deal with the problems facing all victims, I might well have been prepared to listen to him. However, he has not said that; instead, he says that this will be a permanent change to the way that we do things. I am not convinced. This is oppressive, authoritarian and, quite honestly, much as I admire the Deputy Prime Minister, reactionary.

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[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

Anyone who has worked on the frontline of the criminal justice system knows that the Crown court crisis has been years in the making. Underfunding, austerity, covid and the changing nature of crime, with cases becoming increasingly complex and evidential volumes growing exponentially, have compounded the issue.

The changes in the Bill offer a pragmatic solution, and it is important that we are all clear about what is being proposed. The Bill does not abolish jury trials; it simply adjusts the threshold at which a case warrants a jury’s involvement. Magistrates are absolutely capable of hearing cases commanding a sentence of up two years; they already do in the youth court and there has been no outcry that young people do not get justice because of it.

As the Crown court backlog has increased, so has the percentage of cases committed to that court, because defendants have overruled the magistrates’ decision, and that is despite the sentence, in the most serious version of the Crown’s case, not exceeding the magistrates’ maximum powers. One may wonder why a defendant would seek to take his case to a court with greater sentencing powers, but the calculation is clear. The longer the wait for a trial, the harder it will be for witnesses to have a clear recollection of events and the more likely it is for victims to withdraw. Indeed, in one of my cases, a defendant hoped that the 96-year-old victim of burglary would die before the trial took place.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

This is the crux of the issue that we are discussing today: how do make sure that justice is given to victims as quickly as possible? Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill enables us to do that?

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[Linsey Farnsworth]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that this is about getting justice to victims, which defendants game the system to prevent.

Arguments against the Crown court bench division seem to presuppose some measure of unfairness of having a single judge deciding guilt or innocence, but district judges have sat alone in the magistrates court for decades, and there have been no campaigns suggesting that they should be abolished on the grounds of unfairness or otherwise. The Crown court bench division is predicted to save 5,000 sitting days in 2028-29. As well as reducing the time spent in the courtroom, fewer jury trials will also free up administrative staff, who are feeling under immense pressure.

For those who suggest that greater investment and efficiencies alone will be sufficient, I remind them that Sir Brian Leveson has said that this alone cannot solve this crisis. That accords with my experience of working as a Crown prosecutor from 2003 right up until just before the general election, during which time countless efficiency initiatives were introduced but were ultimately unable to prevent the crisis from developing. Efficiencies alone cannot turn this around.

[Lloyd Hatton]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such an eloquent speech. Does she share my concern that if we were, heaven forfend, to walk away from the crucial reforms in this Bill, the police officers, prison officers, CPS staff and those who work in our Crown courts would not thank us for the mess that we would be leaving them, with the Crown court system grinding to a halt and backlogs ballooning?

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank all those people working in the criminal justice system who, frankly, have been propping up the system with the generosity of their time, working extra hours over and above, and giving everything. They have propped up the criminal justice system in that way for years.

If we do not act now, the wait time for cases to reach trial is projected to increase, and the consequences will be stark. First, justice will be delayed. That means victims waiting years for closure and a chance to heal, it means the wrongly accused waiting years for their name to be cleared, and it means those who have offended waiting years until they can be rehabilitated. Secondly, if we do not act, we will not fix the vicious cycle of interconnected crises: the staffing crisis, the prison crises, the recidivism crisis and the VAWG crisis.

We finally have a Government brave enough to grip these problems through record levels of investment, through the emergency early release scheme, through sentencing reform and through the measures in this Bill. The Bill rebalances the criminal justice system to ensure that jury trials are always available for the most serious cases, that cases are heard sooner, that victims are treated more fairly, that our criminal justice system continues to provide justice now, and that it is future-proofed for years to come. I wholeheartedly support the Government and this Bill.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I want to get three more people in, so pithy questions and pithy answers, please.

Sir Brian Leveson: I am sorry.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

Q I serve on the Justice Committee and am a former Crown prosecutor, so I have an interest in the Crown prosecutions aspect of this.

On 17 March, we heard evidence on the Justice Committee from Tom Guest, the director of policy at the Crown Prosecution Service. He talked about the CPS being supportive of the structural reform that is proposed in the Bill. He said that we were “at a critical juncture” and that this is

“a generational opportunity for end-to-end reform. Our view is that we have gone far beyond the point where piecemeal or non-legislative solutions will suffice. They are definitely part of the solution, but they will not solve the problem. The status quo is failing victims, witnesses and defendants.”

Do you recognise that sentiment, and do you have any comments in relation to the view of the Crown Prosecution Service and its role to play in this structural reform?

Sir Brian Leveson: I do recognise the sentiment: it is exactly my own. I think the CPS has an enormous role to play. You will know from the report that I wrote that there are lots of areas in which improvement and co-ordination of activity is critical. IT changes have to made: there are 43 forces with 43 different IT systems, each of which the CPS have to negotiate with. Redaction is an enormous problem, as is file build. The relationship between the police and the CPS, and the inability of police defence lawyers to speak to CPS lawyers—all that needs to change, and that is why I suggested the adviser.

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[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.

[Paulette Hamilton]

Q Thank you all, and can I add to everybody’s remarks about the powerful testimonies that are coming across today? Following on from Joe’s question, my question is for you, Farah. The Bill’s impact assessment states that repeal alone is unlikely to materially change the outcomes. As the chief exec of Women’s Aid, what further steps does Women’s Aid feel need to be taken to protect children from a parent?

Farah Nazeer: I think the repeal of the presumption is the cornerstone, because that gives the foundation on which the other measures rest. I think the first thing is mandatory training so that there is real understanding of coercive control and domestic abuse. I still speak to survivors daily who tell us that judges are saying, “Well, why didn’t you leave earlier? If it was that bad, why are you still there?” There is a real lack of understanding of coercive control, economic abuse and how coercive control can manifest in multiple different ways—the isolation, the withdrawal of technology and all the many things that make it impossible to leave. I think that mandatory training is really important.

The training also has to include a real understanding of the barriers that survivors face, particularly those with minoritised backgrounds, such as black women, women from minority backgrounds, deaf and disabled women and LGBTQ+ constituents. They face additional barriers and challenges in accessing justice, as well as in accessing empathy and understanding of their particular situations, which might have cultural implications, or mean different things in the domestic abuse context. We need really comprehensive training and understanding.

We also need unevidenced concepts like parental alienation to be banned from family courts, and we need actual regulated professionals—if they need to be brought in—to advise courts and judges in a way that the system and survivors can have confidence in. Right now, this is inconsistent and, in some cases, outright dangerous, as we can see from the many reports we have produced at Women’s Aid. I would say that those are the three most important things to ensure that we have a safe system.

The other piece that perhaps sits outside the provisions of the Bill is the specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence services that need to be there to support survivors through either the family court processes or the criminal court processes. Unless you have someone supporting survivors through those processes, they can be brutal. It is very hard to sustain the energy and commitment to return to those settings, time after time.

You build yourself up, as my fellow panellists have said, and then you are let down again. The experiences themselves are also deeply distressing. Without those specialist services there to support survivors, justice will not happen either way. It is really important that there is a recognition that specialist services are pivotal to ensuring that justice happens.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

Q Are you familiar with the argument of the retired Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Alan Moses, in The Guardian this week, that a third of the backlog could be cleared if we employed retired judges to undertake a winnowing exercise to clear the cases that will never come to court, and is he correct?

Claire Davies: I have not read that article, but if there is more judiciary, then there is more access for people. A lot of residents are taking the approach of looking at the outstanding cases, looking at the sorts of cases that may not go to trial, and bringing them in. As well as more judiciary to assist in that process, or to crack through the trials that there are, there would need to be the courtroom availability, and of course what has to come with more courtroom availability is staff so that the courts run efficiently. We would welcome retired judges to come back. There are many who currently sit in retirement in any event.

Caroline Goodwin: It would be absolutely brilliant to have these very senior judges come back. They have an absolute wealth of knowledge that they can bring. If they are prepared to operate in that role, it is a win-win situation. If we can instantly recruit more judiciary to deal with these cases, then it is something we should be proactively looking at.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

Q It is fair to say that the CPS’s breadth of experience across the criminal justice system is unparalleled, given that it takes cases through the system, from advising the police at charge through to the magistrates court, the Crown court and the appeals court. Is it right that it is in a good position to understand the system fully, from start to finish?

Caroline Goodwin: It might understand the system, but it is about the application of the system. You may have a set of papers that comes in from the police and is sent to a reviewing lawyer—

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I am getting to my point; I am very conscious of time. It is fair to say that the CPS has a good overview of the system.

Caroline Goodwin: Yes.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q Thank you. Tom Guest, one of the directors at the CPS, recently gave evidence to the Justice Committee. He said:

“Our view is that we have gone far beyond the point where piecemeal or non-legislative solutions will suffice.”

He went on to say that the official view of the CPS is that the 20% time-saving projection regarding jury trials in the independent report is

“very much on the conservative side”.

Does the CPS not have a credible voice on those two points?

Caroline Goodwin: May I deal with that? It may be a credible voice in terms of having an argument in the debate, but it is not actually addressing the efficiencies of the Crown Prosecution Service; it is merely saying, “Yes, we think 20% could be a parsimonious figure. It could be a far greater saving of time.” But if we turn and look inwards, at ourselves, the CPS is the start of a lot of the difficulties that there can be around case preparation. That is why I say that there needs to be a rigorous approach when material is sent in to a reviewing lawyer, which is really when the process starts. They need to be saying, “I need you to find me that telecommunications evidence. I need to make sure that that media evidence from those telephones has been produced.” All that should be starting from the word go.

Tom Guest may be right in terms of—[Interruption.] May I finish, please? He may have a voice in the debate and the argument, but in so far as the efficiencies of the service are concerned, the CPS really needs to start looking at itself, and then perhaps it can come on a very strong footing.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q Indeed. I think part of the CPS’s role is to look at the impact of the court backlog on the system as a whole, and jury trials are a part of that. A big part of the work of the CPS is in the court back office, in relation to other aspects of juries that create time pressures on the system: preparation of jury bundles, dealing with jury queries when people have been summoned, juror expenses, and so on. Having fewer jury trials in itself will help with that back-office preparation and work, will it not?

Caroline Goodwin: With respect, often what happens is that counsel are told, “Please make sure that you know what’s going to be in the jury bundle.” That gets sent to counsel; counsel deals with that. Counsel is asked, “Can you make sure you can deal with the witness order?” Counsel produces that. All that you are having to do, basically, is either put material on a photocopier or put it into a media form so it can be played in court.

[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—

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[The Chair]

Linsey, did you have a very quick question? You have seconds.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Is it not the case that magistrates courts can be more agile in terms of court listing and picking up cases, like we heard from the Canadian—

[The Chair]

Order. Sorry, but that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you very much for your evidence.

Ordered,

That the Order of the Committee of 25 March 2026, as amended, be varied by as follows—

Leave out rows 28 to end and insert—

“

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[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Lord Burnett, would you say the same?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I was going to make the observation that Sir Richard just made about the very low level of appeals from the magistrates court to the Crown court, which is something of a tribute to our magistracy. It really is a very low level, so I do not personally see this as a big problem.

You asked about risk; one of the reasons why the current system exists is that the magistrates court is not a court of record and transcripts of what has gone on in the magistrates court are not readily available. If there were to be an appeal of the sort that is contemplated in this legislation, my understanding is that there needs to be quite a lot of work to put the nuts and bolts in place in the magistrates court. Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I had not understood that it was expected that this could be put into place immediately. It is more a tidying-up measure, as I see it, that accompanies issues that are really much more important.

Clement Goldstone: In principle, I am in favour of controlling the right of appeal to the Crown court. When I was in Liverpool—it is not that long ago—we were sitting one or sometimes two judges on Thursdays and Fridays on appeals. For some unknown reason, there seemed to be a lot dangerous dogs in Liverpool, so there were a lot of dangerous dog appeals.

More seriously, I do not think the right is abused, because it is there to be utilised, but I do believe that there is an argument for weeding out a lot of hopeless appeals. Also, you must bear in mind that if there is an appeal based on a wish to call fresh evidence, particularly perhaps bearing in mind that a defendant in the magistrates court was not represented, that is something that would have to be carefully considered, so I would not reject it as a good idea, because it could result in time savings, but it is something that has to be counselled with caution.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q You said that your preference would be for two magistrates and a judge to sit together, and I understand your views on that. There are already examples in our criminal justice system of where a judge sits alone in the magistrates court. We have district judges, which I am old enough to remember as stipendiary magistrates. I am not aware of any big campaigns or calls for them to be abolished. They deal with the most serious cases in the magistrates court, or tend to. Are you aware of any campaign to get rid of them because of unfairness or otherwise?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: District judges (magistrates’ court), formerly stipendiary magistrates, have been a feature of our system since the mid-19th century—I cannot remember precisely which year they were introduced. I have never been aware of any reasoned criticism of the way in which they conduct cases. On the contrary, the rate of appeal that Sir Richard referred to includes cases that have been tried by district judges and deputy district judges. It is a phenomenon that we are used to in the criminal justice system.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q On the practicalities of jury trials, you talked about the time savings of having judge-only trials over jury trials. I want to talk about other potential savings in terms of the backlog generally through jury trials. Personally, I think that a judge-only trial would make listing more agile. If a witness becomes ill, the judge could sit in a few days’ time, whereas a jury trial might be aborted and have to go back into the court list. What is the impact of those sorts of features on the court list more generally, rather than on the time saving in a particular trial in that moment?

Clement Goldstone: It would give the opportunity to a judge who was in the middle of a judge-alone or judge-with-magistrates trial to say, “We will have to break off because this witness is ill,” to use your example, or, “because the defendant is ill,” and that would enable him to start another trial. At the moment, in the Crown court, where there is a judge and a jury, when a witness is ill, very often there is an abortive trial. If a witness does not turn up and the witness cannot be found, a decision has to be taken whether to go on or to give a little limited time for the witness to be found. Therefore, one of the other savings of time that will follow is that there will be no retrials and no juries to discharge, for whatever reason.

I know that is not a direct answer to your question, but it is another by-product of restricting the right to trial by jury to the cases that are envisaged. There is, of course, a catch-all for the cases in which the public interest requires a trial by jury, even if conviction merits a sentence of less than three years.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q So potentially there would be less repetitive listing of the same trial over and over again through those issues.

Clement Goldstone: You would have one trial listed once, hopefully.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Q My last question is about the allocation process. In previous debates, we have heard concern that the judge’s allocation decision about whether it is the Crown court bench division or a jury trial would be a very long process. There would be a lot of work and a lot of written submissions, and it would take the judge a long time to make those decisions. That mirrors the process of the decisions that magistrates make every day, which, in my experience, often take three or four minutes to decide. The system would essentially require a defence advocate to argue for a higher sentence if they are pushing for a jury trial. Does that strike you as an unusual argument for a defence barrister to be making? Do you think the allocation process could actually be quite efficient?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I have read some of these arguments, and I have been slightly surprised by them. I cannot help the old advocate in me thinking that lawyers are terribly good at finding nine reasons why you should not do something. We all did that; that is what lawyers are sometimes asked to do. I think this one will very much depend upon the procedures that are put in place for dealing with it.

Obviously, if you are going to create a new decision that has to be made, there will need to be adjustments to the practice direction and probably the criminal procedure rules, and I am not sure that detail has been thought through yet. If it has, I am not aware of it. I imagine that most of these decisions would be done on the papers. It strikes me as rather extravagant to suppose that you list it for half an hour for argument to deal with something like that, so I think that one is a bit of a bogeyman.

Sir Richard Henriques: Paper applications seem to me to be fairly obvious.

Clement Goldstone: Judges in the Crown court are very good at paper applications. They are used to them.

[Mr Kohler]

Q We all agree that the backlog is too great. Lord Burnett, in The Guardian this week retired Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Alan Moses argued that we could cut the backlog by a third in six months if we employed retired judges to winnow the current backlog. Do you agree? [Interruption.] Richard clearly does not.

Lord Burnett of Maldon: It is a very good journalistic article.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have a quick declaration before the Minister comes in.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I want to declare that, as Crown prosecutor, I was assigned to the team that looked at the Insulate Britain campaign and reviewed the evidence as to whether charges should be brought. I want to make that clear and put it out in the open.

Tim Crosland: Thank you.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I want to be clear about the scope of this argument. Obviously, the least serious cases that take place in the context of public order would never get to the Crown anyway, because they could be heard within the magistrates—is that right?

Tim Crosland: Increasingly they are getting to the Crown court, because of this and the previous Government’s crackdown on protests. We had the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; there is now a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for any act that interferes with the rights of anybody in any way. We are now getting more protest cases coming to the Crown court, and more than 200 people have been jailed in the last few years for peaceful acts of protest. But of those 200 people, only one has been jailed for more than three years. A number of people have been jailed for precisely three years—the threshold in this legislation—but only one for more than four years. Almost any judge would be able to say that it is incredibly unlikely that you will get a sentence of more than three years imprisonment—therefore, no jury.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Seventh sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I say gently that if we are referring to the Lammy review we give it its name, and if we are talking about the Secretary of State we refer to him as that and not just his name.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington for tabling new clause 29, which I support. It is a long-standing principle, established in the case of R v Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy, that justice must be done and be seen to be done. It is famous as a legal precedent in establishing the principle that the mere appearance of bias is sufficient to overturn a judicial decision.

To be confident in our criminal justice system, the public need to be satisfied that it is fair. New clause 29 would provide important reassurance that there is a check and balance in place to review the changes the Bill introduces, and that any issues of bias arising from a trial without jury can and will be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. As I have said, if you are referring to the Secretary of State, can you use his title?

[Linsey Farnsworth]

I do apologise, Ms Jardine.

The report by the Deputy Prime Minister, as he is now, was conducted almost a decade ago. It highlighted concern about the sentencing decisions of judges, so it is often cited—understandably—as a reason to be cautious about judge-only trials. New clause 29 would ensure that a review of judge-only trials will be conducted after a year, and should there be disparities in the conviction rates for those of an ethnic minority background and/or for white British persons living in lower-income households, measures can and will be put in place to prevent such disparities from arising.

It is also right that a further review is conducted between 35 and 36 months after enactment, as the new clause suggests, both to check the initial findings and to take account of the fact that things can change. In the review conducted by the Deputy Prime Minister, for example, it was found that where CPS charging decisions were concerned, a defendant’s ethnicity did not affect the likelihood of their being charged. However, subsequent research conducted by the University of Leeds, in which the outcomes of decision making in 195,000 cases between 2018 and 2021 were examined, identified evidence of disproportionality in CPS decision making. Specifically, defendants from minority ethnic backgrounds were significantly more likely to be charged than a white British defendant for a comparable offence.

Additional research by the independent disproportionality advisory group and scrutiny by the CPS itself has led to an action plan to tackle the disproportionality that was found to exist, and to deliver change. There is precedent for ongoing review of disparities in outcomes within the criminal justice system where ethnicity is concerned, and precedent for action being taken to address such disparities.

Recent research by the University of Birmingham identified concern about racial bias within juries, particularly when there is no representation of ethnic minorities among the 12 people serving on a jury. This research cited a case in which an attack on the victim was caught on CCTV, yet in May 2022 a jury with no black members acquitted most of the perpetrators. The researchers concluded that their study raised important questions about whether the public in England and Wales see juries as being fair and just in relation to racial minorities, and that juries in England and Wales remain extremely lacking in diversity; that is what the study found. Another problem the study identified in that case was that the concerns of victims’ families about racial bias among the jury were never investigated.

[Dr Mullan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[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.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

I want to comment on two points. First, I agree entirely with the speech of the hon. Member for Chichester on the problem with clause 3 and jury allocation, and I especially agree with her point about the retrospective reallocation of cases, whereby people waiting for trial by jury will suddenly find that their case will be removed from the jury and heard elsewhere. She outlined in comprehensive detail all the issues—not just jurisprudence issues but legal and factual issues. I support what she said so I will not repeat it.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley about these issues. She highlighted the disparities in the way that different groups of people are treated in our criminal justice system. I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington for tabling new clause 29. I hope that the Government will consider accepting it although, of course, if we did not abolish jury trial we would not need it.

We are told that the reason for clauses 1 and 3, which restrict access to jury trials in many cases, is to do with the backlog. That is where the Government start their position—the backlog—and I want to concentrate on that aspect. Please bear with me: I will blind the Committee with a few facts and figures because I think that they will make logical sense of why people such as me say that juries are not the reason for the delays. It is important that we get that sense.

There are currently around 88,000 cases awaiting trial in the Crown courts. The queue for the Crown court is now so long that some trials are being fixed for 2030—the Committee has heard that. We have talked about the old adage that, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” That is happening, and the delay is unacceptable, but the answer is honestly not to get rid of one of the fundamental systems that we have had in our country for centuries.

The reason for the delay is not juries but the court structure and how things happen there. One judge sitting in one courtroom for one day is known as a sitting day. The Old Bailey has 18 courts. It therefore has capacity for 18 sitting days per day, 90 sitting days per week and 4,500 sitting days in a 50-week year. For the last 15 years, restrictions have been placed on the number of sitting days in Crown court centres around the country. Resident judges, who are the principal judges at each court centre, have been told that funding will be given only for a limited number of sitting days. Restrictions of between 9% and 25% have been imposed. That is what the previous Government did.

There is always a queue for the Crown court; that is inevitable, as cases cannot be tried immediately. However—and here is the story—up until the start of 2019, that queue was managed without any undue delay. The backlog had come down from around 56,000 cases in 2014 to 33,000 cases by the start of 2019. All those cases were tried by a jury, and within a reasonable time: within six months if the defendant was in custody, and between eight and 12 months if they were on bail. Given that cases were being tried within a reasonable time in 2019, the suggestion that jury trials somehow take longer or are more complicated has no basis.

The length of the cases backlog rose from 33,000 at the start of 2019 to 71,000 by summer 2024, and rose by another 10% to around 80,000 last year. That increase is a direct consequence of the restrictions placed on sitting days. The problem was exacerbated by the closure of some courts. For example, Blackfriars Crown court in central London, which was a custom-made, modern Crown court building with eight courtrooms and the capacity to host 2,000 sitting days in a 50-week year, was closed and sold in 2019. Over the six years since then, 12,000 potential sitting days have been lost.

There are around 4,000 rape cases in the backlog. Trials for rape that have one defendant and one complainant often takes five days—although some trials are quicker and some take longer—so 2,400 of such cases could have been tried in the 12,000 sitting days that were lost following the closure of those eight courtrooms at Blackfriars. The budgetary decision to close one court led to the inability to try what would have been half of all rape cases in the backlog. Similar examples exist all over the country, including where individual courtrooms within a Crown court building sit empty, meaning that the court is open but operating below its potential capacity.

The Crown court estate has a maximum capacity of around 130,000 sitting days. Currently, it is permitted to have 113,000 sitting days, which is partly because the Government have invested some money and allowed an increase to the number of sitting days. The Government have said that that number is a “record high”, but it is high only relative to the low numbers of the previous 15 years. Given the current backlog, I would say that it is incorrect to say that it is high. We need to invest in more sitting days and having more courtrooms open.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eighth sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Sackman]

The Government have deliberately drafted clause 4 in a manner that focuses on the overall nature of the case, rather than applying an artificial count-by-count test. The necessary question that we are asking the court to apply is whether, taken as whole, it justifies an order for a judge-only trial, given the policy intent that lies behind clause 4, not whether every individual count meets a particular threshold. Such an approach also risks incentivising artificial charging decisions or indictment charges to determine the eligibility for mode-of-trial decisions, rather than focusing on the effective management and efficient conduct of the trial.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

The Minister mentions charging decisions. As it stands, the amendment would suggest absolutely nonsensical charging decisions. Prosecuting somebody for all the offences listed in part 1 of schedule 3ZA would fly in the face of common sense and go against the code for Crown prosecutors, which makes it clear that prosecutors should select charges to

“reflect the seriousness and extent of the offending…give the court adequate powers to sentence”

and

“enable the case to be presented in a clear and simple way.”

Does the Minister agree that if all the charges listed in the schedule had to be included in a case, that would be completely contrary to the prosecutor’s obligation?

[Sarah Sackman]

My hon. Friend is right. Flexibility is not a weaking of the safeguards; it is what actually allows the statutory test in clause 4 to operate properly and in appropriate scenarios.

Judges will already be required to consider the technicality and length of the case when making an order as to whether to allocate to a judge-only trial. Cases including indictable-only homicide and sexual offences are excluded from the outset because we regard those as cases where a jury trial is in the public interest. For those reasons, I urge the shadow Minister to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (Tenth sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

I rise to speak in enthusiastic support of the clause. If we were starting from scratch, would we deal with this issue in primary legislation? I expect not. I do not know the history of why the approach of the time was followed, but it seems that the matter should be addressed flexibly via regulations. Members will have heard us argue vociferously against the use of both positive and negative regulations in different contexts, but it seems appropriate in these circumstances. The proposal reflects the changing nature of how people work, interact and fulfil their role as magistrates. We want to support and accommodate that in a way that is not over-rigid.

Of course, there will be opportunities for scrutiny of the legislation to come. Even though we have talked about the significant limitations of the negative procedure, scrutiny is still an option in theory if something were proposed that that we really were not happy about. Considering the stakes of this issue, that is a proportionate approach.

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine.

I wanted to speak on this clause because, as the Minister said, while it is technical and feels dry, it is incredibly important. I appeared in front of many magistrates over my 21 years as a Crown prosecutor. They do an incredibly important job and provide a huge public service. During the course of this legislative process, it has been concerning to hear suggestions that magistrates are, in some respects, an inferior bench or forum for our criminal justice system. That is far from my experience over 21 years.

I put on record my thanks to all the magistrates who serve day in, day out, across this country. The clause recognises them and shows that we can be dynamic in rewarding them. The Minister mentioned the medal, which I welcome. I can think of many magistrates who deserve a medal for their work. It is important that we pass the clause today.