Paul Kohler
Main Page: Paul Kohler (Liberal Democrat - Wimbledon)Department Debates - View all Paul Kohler's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Restriction of Jury Trials
Paul Kohler Excerpts(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Sarah Sackman
As my hon. Friend knows, we inherited record and rising backlogs. As I have said, we have a mountain to climb. We are trying to turn around an oil tanker, and we are not going to do that simply by sitting our way out of the problem. That is what Sir Brian Leveson concludes in his report. Of course, we need additional sitting days, and we are already sitting over 5,000 more days than we were when we took over. Sir Brian concludes that that alone will be insufficient to turn the tide on the backlog, and that is why we need system reform coupled with the investment. That will do the job to bring down the backlogs to sustainable levels.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
I have some sympathy for the Minister. We all know that the Tories fiddled, leaving our criminal justice system to burn. As the Law Society president noted earlier this year, we are still not using our courts efficiently, despite what the Minister says. What steps have been taken to increase court sitting days and make better use of our under-utilised courtrooms?
Sarah Sackman
First, I pay tribute not just to our judges, but our court staff and our hard-working prosecutors and defence lawyers, because we know that judges in the Crown court are hearing almost 30% more cases than they were pre-covid. In that sense, the system is working harder. As I have just indicated, we have added more sitting days. We have added more than 5,000 more sitting days than were being sat when we took over in government, and I want us to go further. We need to match the system reform with investment, and I hope that we will be able to come back to the House at the conclusion of the concordat process, which needs to take its course, and assure the House that we are sitting at maximum system capacity.