Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Sackman Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

Q Right. You mentioned the letter. It also refers to these reforms as a potential distraction from some of the hard work that you talk about. You may have heard that this morning the Victims’ Commissioner characterised that letter as being purely about the perspective of women and girls in relation to their being defendants. Do you think that is a fair and accurate characterisation of that letter?

Kirsty Brimelow: No, it is not, because that is not actually what it says. The letter sets out that they are against curbing jury trials because of the lack of trust in the criminal justice system, and that impacts those from minoritised communities in particular. We know from the statistics that black defendants and women by majority elect to go to the Crown court. Those are the ones who have trust in the jury system. That is the objection within the letter. I am sorry to see that she is mischaracterised in that way, because that is not what the letter is about.

The letter does say that it is a crude approach to characterise victims as simply those who are complainants: victims can also end up as defendants, and we have had many examples of that. I had a case at the end of last year representing a woman who was subject, clearly, to coercive control and, in part, physical abuse. She ended up a defendant, and the jury heard from her about how she ended up getting in the position she did alongside the man who was controlling her. They acquitted her; they convicted him.

[The Minister for Courts and Legal Services (Sarah Sackman)]

Q I am going to direct my questions to Ms Brimelow. I think we agree that the delays in our criminal justice system are a scandal and that something needs to be done about them, don’t we?

Kirsty Brimelow: Yes, of course. That has always been the position.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q And I think we agree that there have been multiple drivers of how we got here. One of those drivers was the real-term cuts to justice spending under the previous Government, including cuts to legal aid and court closures. That was one of the drivers, wasn’t it?

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree that it is one Government. I would say, across Governments, there is a lot to answer for. We saw a rapid cutting of MOJ funding between 2009-10 and 2022-23: it declined by 22.4%. We are about 30% below where we should be.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q So there was a cut in investment. There have been several things that we needed to do, some of which have been welcomed by both the Bar Council and the CBA—not least the uncapping of sitting days, which the Government have committed to.

Kirsty Brimelow: That is welcomed.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q That is welcomed. It also includes the introduction of match funding for criminal Bar pupillages; the need for action on prisoner transport, which needs to happen and which you pointed to as an issue; and the need for improvement in our listing practices. We need to do all those things—that much is clear, and we agree with that. But you will have seen the conclusion of the independent review of criminal courts, which is supported by the Government’s conclusion that, of themselves, investment and efficiencies will not be enough to keep up with the demand coming into the system, let alone bring down the backlog. They simply will not, will they?

Kirsty Brimelow: Well, the Institute for Government disagrees with that. The Institute for Government says that if you focus on productivity and capacity in the courts—

[Sarah Sackman]

Yes.

Kirsty Brimelow: You asked the question; just let me answer. If you focus on that, then that is the way to get back to 2016-17 productivity. The Institute for Government does not agree and says that it is highly uncertain, and even Sir Brian says that his time estimates are highly uncertain and based on assumptions.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q We will come on to that in a second. I have a chance to ask questions of the IFG a little later. You have not put forward any alternative reforms. You have said—in fact, to be fair, it was Ms Karmy-Jones who said it—that you reject the reforms contained in clauses 1 to 7 of the Bill in their entirety and that you would reject any constraint on jury trials.

Let us come back to the IFG because the IRCC’s modelling is clear that, without structural reform, we will not bring down the backlog. A key conclusion of the IFG is that the major constraint on productivity is the workforce challenge. We know that 4% of Crown court cases did not go ahead last year because of the lack of barristers. The Bar Council and the CBA have pointed that out, and we know that the number of publicly funded silks has dropped by a quarter in the last decade. That is right, is it not?

Kirsty Brimelow: Yes.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q So you would agree with me that we cannot get those numbers of criminal lawyers back up to where they were overnight, can we? It is going to take years to train enough barristers to address that aspect of the productivity challenge, is it not?

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree with that, because the positive news is that when there is an investment in legal aid, such as happened in 2022—unfortunately, after criminal barristers had to take action—we see an increase in barristers coming back into criminal law. They are already trained—they have just left to go into other areas—but when there is an increase in legal aid, they have come back. Another Government pledge has been to increase legal aid by around £27 million. Our recommendation is that the sooner that can be done, the sooner you will hopefully reverse this and bring back some of the KCs who have left.

May I pick up one other point? We are suggesting amendments to the Bill. We are completely alongside the Criminal Bar Association on restrictions on clauses 1 to 7. One proposal that we say will make a huge difference is, instead of having a court without a jury, having a court with a jury that focuses on sexual offences and domestic abuse cases. I think that was in the Labour party manifesto. Focus on those cases of the vulnerable people who are waiting. Bring those forward, prioritise those and reduce delays for those people.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I think there is consensus between us that we need to grow capacity in the criminal legal profession. I think where we are disagreeing is that we say that it is unrealistic that that will happen in the short term. It is going to take years to build the Bar back to what it was in 2016, from where it is currently. It is going to take investment, legal aid and match funding for pupillages, and it will take years.

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree, because we have the example from 2022, where you have the increase in the barristers coming back. That happened within that first year. You could see the increase in the barristers coming back.

Looking at the courts, we can see that happen when they are given the tools they need—where the courts cap is lifted. Woolwich in 2023 was an example of that, when it could then operate properly and start to reduce its backlog. When the courts were capped again, and they had reduced capacity and lost two judges, their backlog started going up again. We have plenty of examples where it is not as you are saying.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q We both agree that we need investment. We agree that we need to do a major drive on efficiency and the Government are doing that. Sir Brian’s team concluded that both those things would not be enough to bring down the backlog. My question to the Bar is, “What do you know that Sir Brian’s team does not?”

Kirsty Brimelow: We know, operationally, what works. You will hear some more of that from the circuit leaders who are giving evidence. I have pointed to Woolwich as an example in 2023. We are agreed on the fact that we need to reduce delays. We focus on, “Where are the delays happening?” If we are serious about reducing them, we need to look at where they are happening.

You have heard a lot from victims of rape this morning. It should be made clear to them that the delays are weighted pre-court, so the median average that a rape victim is waiting is happening in the investigation stage and the charge stage—it is around two years. The median average currently from receipt in Crown court to completion is around a year. That is still too long, but we need to focus, therefore, on what is happening with the CPS and what is happening on investigation.

Charlotte Nichols was mentioned this morning by Vera Baird. In her case, she had more than two years waiting before getting to court. When it got to court, it was eight and a half months to conclude, so it is important to look at where the problem is and focus there.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Q Thank you both very much for being here—we really appreciate your time. What effect could the Bill’s proposed changes to jury trials have on newly qualified legal professionals, who quite often cut their teeth on jury trials with lesser sentences? Also, at the other end of the profession, have you done any polling or modelling to see whether this could impact the number of legal professionals staying in the profession?

Kirsty Brimelow: We have heard—and I agree with this—that we already have the data, and I believe some more data is coming over the next weeks. We already have the data to show that a quarter of King’s counsel have now left working in publicly funded work. As I have said, we have the retention back on our junior Bar, which is very positive after the investment in legal aid, but we need the legal aid promise to come through quickly to keep that retention, and hopefully attract back the KCs.

However, if jury trials are removed for those cases where juniors are currently very much cutting their teeth—they are doing those trials in their early years of practice before a jury—it may well be a disincentive to doing criminal law. From my own experience of coming from a mixed, publicly funded chambers—we do not do private cases, but legal aid cases across all the jurisdictions—there is always that persuasion with our young barristers as to what area of law they will go into. The persuasion that lands is, “You will have the advocacy with the jury trial.”

If they do not have that advocacy, my fear is that we will lose our junior practitioners, who are very important, or we could end up with very junior practitioners whose first jury trial may have a level of seriousness beyond their ability, which again impacts on the quality of justice, and there could be a potential increase in miscarriages of justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Thank you.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q It is good to see you all again. We have had a number of engagements over the past year, so it is good to be able to engage once again. You have heard a number of different witnesses from a number of different angles on the scandalous delays in our criminal courts. As circuit leaders, I expect you agree with me that something needs to be done to address it. I am looking at Claire, because I know the problems are especially acute in the south-east. I am right about that, aren’t I?

Claire Davies: Yes, and I agree that something has to be done.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q No doubt you would also welcome the investment the Government are making in uncapping sitting days and thereby removing the financial limit on how much you and others can sit in the Crown court.

Claire Davies: Absolutely. That is something we have wanted for a very long time now, because that would have seen an immediate effect before now.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q You will have seen the conclusion of the independent review of criminal courts: that, notwithstanding maximum investment and efficiency measures that doubtless need to be taken, those two things alone are incapable of reducing the backlog. That is the evidence of the independent review.

Claire Davies: We do not necessarily agree. The difficulty has been that the sitting days have been cut not just under one Government, but more. The Nightingale courts that were dealing with the bail cases that are the ones at the end of the outstanding cases that we have, certainly in London and the south-east, were closed. I think we have one that has just been made permanent, thank you—Chichester. They were there, and that is what kept part of our outstanding cases under control.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I understand that you do not agree, but I do not understand that any of the circuits have produced independent evidence of their own to suggest that that conclusion is wrong and that we can bring down the backlog without some form of reform. I understand you disagree with the reforms the Government are pursuing, but I have not seen any evidence that it can be reduced absent reform from the circuits.

Caroline Goodwin: Can I deal with this? The reality is that we have not been able to do this. Because there has been a consistent cap on sitting days, judges have not been able to open up court days. They have not been able to run blitz days where they can really take hold of a case and shake it and say, “Right, what is going on?” We have not had any great directives to the CPS to say, “When you’re charging these cases, you need to review these very thoroughly.” Throughout this entire time, the criminal Bar and the entire justice system has been brought to its knees. So if you are saying, “Is there any empirical evidence that this doesn’t work on your circuit, Ms Goodwin?”, we have not been able to do it.

If I can finish on this point, I can point to where our courts have taken over pleas, have been able to open up another court and have brought in 300 extra cases, which is really important, and 80 of those are RASSO. The example I am going to give you on my circuit at the coalface is Teesside. Newcastle has also been enabled in the last six months to open up one more case. The reality is that all their class 2 cases, which are very serious cases dealing with sexual offences, are now listed within their time limits. So if you want to see if there is a change, it is happening now. You just have to let us do it. May I make this very clear? I do acknowledge that you have finally lifted up the cap on the sitting days, but we need it consistently. You can twist all these figures around however you want to, but you have to let us try.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q One final point. I am happy for each and any one of you to come in. There is certainly no twisting of figures. These are figures produced by an independent review and Government modelling. But you are absolutely right: there needs to be maximalist investment, which is why we have uncapped sitting days. I entirely agree, and there are some excellent models from Liverpool and elsewhere, about blitz courts, and we are beginning blitz courts in London and the south-east as of April. But the conclusion of the Government’s modelling and the independent review is that those things alone, vital though they will be—we cannot do this without them—will not bring down the backlog. There is no other evidence that the backlog can be brought down without some form of reform, is there?

Samantha Hillas: The difficulty is that we do not necessarily accept the assertions about the time saving. Let us take at face value the assertion that there is a 20% time saving, which takes a five-day case down to four. Clause 5 says that the judge has to produce a judgment as soon as reasonably possible thereafter, so when is that going to be written? That is your fifth day. That is what the judge is going to have to do on that day.

Claire Davies: Can I answer the question about the lack of evidence? Wood Green Crown court is a prime example. In August 2023, Harrow Crown court was closed. It has still not reopened; in fact, it reopens on 13 April, due to the state of the building. Wood Green was using Hendon magistrates as four Crown courtrooms, and it got its backlog down to near pre-covid levels. When Harrow closed, Wood Green lost those four Crown courtrooms, because of course Harrow had to function somewhere. The consequence was that Wood Green’s backlog went up. That is a simple example of what extra court space does.

Maidstone has been listing into Southwark and Woolwich. There have been ramifications for Woolwich and Southwark, because they have lost courtrooms, but giving them more court space has enabled them to reduce their lists too. That is without any other efficiencies, and we say that the efficiencies must be tried first. For example, in the trial I am in at the moment in Winchester, prisoner escort has not managed to bring the defendants to court on time for most of the trial, even though they are in Winchester prison.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. The Minister wants to come in very quickly, and then I will bring in the Lib Dem spokesperson.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Just finally to Ms Davies, if I may, you said that efficiencies must be tried first. That argument has been aired very widely. Do you have any sense of how long those efficiencies would take to bring down the backlog? If we pursued all the efficiencies, which the Government are doing—I have mentioned some examples—and maintained uncapped sitting days, how long would it take to bring down the backlog?

Claire Davies: We do not know, because we have not been provided with the data that the Government have. We have consistently asked for the data.

[Sarah Sackman]

It is in the impact assessment.

Claire Davies: The impact assessment does not provide data.

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[Dr Mullan]

I know that these words will not necessarily shift your view, but I do not think anybody in this room would think that any of that was your fault, or that you should share any of the blame for what happened to your children. Your testimony is really powerful.

[Sarah Sackman]

Thank you, Claire, for sharing such a powerful testimony. I think I first met you during a Westminster Hall debate, which was called by your tireless and fearless MP Marie Tidball, the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge. Your testimony is compelling and it is why we are bringing forward the provision in clause 17 of the Bill to repeal the presumption of parental contact. We know that will not protect every single child, but it does send quite an important message about what we in Parliament say, which is that the courts should always have at the forefront of their minds the best interests of the child, and that alone. I just want to say thank you.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you, Claire. Can I just acknowledge that children who are yet to go through the family courts are safer because of you and your tireless campaigning over many years? I hope you can hold that close as you go on. I believe that all campaigners like you, who never fight for themselves, are fighting for the next generation—the job is never done. My question to you is: what is the next step? What would you like to see in legislation going forward, especially in our family courts, to protect more children from harm?

Claire Throssell: What I would like to see moving forward is an understanding of what it looks like without presumption of contact; what good practice looks like; understanding trauma; understanding what coercive control is; understanding emotional abuse. We all understand physical abuse—it is there; we see it. What we do not understand is the emotional abuse and the scars that we carry. We must always look from the position of actually seeing a child, hearing a child, believing a child, protecting a child, and we must go from this basis. We must use the legislation that we have in the Domestic Abuse Act. We know that it is not being used in courts. We must see children as victims in their own right of this crime. We must accept children as victims in their own right of this crime, and we must take away the fact that we are always trying to prove the crime that has been committed against us.

Domestic abuse is a crime, so why is it that when we go into family courts we are ripped apart by barristers? Why is it that a crime has been committed against us, but we are always the ones who have to prove it has been committed, and by whom? Why do we have to go into a court, when we have committed no crime, and stand up and be humiliated in order to fight for our children? Why do we have to do that alone?

With any other crime, the onus is on the police to prove that a crime has been committed and by whom, and then sentencing is carried out accordingly, but in a family court, the person who has had the crime committed against them time and again has to prove that that has happened. We are not believed automatically, and we are not supported automatically. There should be special measures in family courts to help see the child, like in the Pathfinder courts, but it is not just about seeing the child; it is about hearing them, believing them, supporting them, and letting perpetrators of abuse know that it will not be accepted and that we are going to take action, protect that child and always presume the unthinkable.

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[Dr Mullan]

Q We have covered jury trials and changes around that, but if you were going to pick one or two other things that you did that you think had the biggest impact on reducing your backlog, what would they be?

Doug Downey: Increasing capacity across the system. We have different levels of court: the Ontario court and the superior court. The Ontario court has a complement of approximately 300 judges. We have added 52 to that complement. In addition, when we add a judge, we add seven full-time staff, whether it be Crown prosecutors, victim service workers or whatnot. In total, we added about 700 full-time staff over that period. Building that capacity has helped. The challenge we have is the increasing rate of intake. There are theories on why that is, but it is a fact that we are dealing with.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q It was very good to have the chance to meet not just you, Mr Downey, but many of the judges at the superior court of Ontario on my recent visit to Canada. I am glad that you are able to join us. I want to ask you about two things: the efficiency and the pace with which judge-alone trials are conducted, as compared with jury trials, within your system, and your perceptions of the fairness and integrity of those judge-alone trials. As you just explained in response to the shadow Minister, judge-alone trials in the criminal court have been a feature of the Canadian system for decades, I understand.

Doug Downey: Absolutely. They have been in place for quite some time. They produce a number of benefits for the system. It is not just the length of trials; it is the expertise that can be brought to bear by an experienced judge. To become a judge, you have to have a minimum of 10 years’ experience at the Bar. It can also create scheduling advantages, because you do not have to schedule contiguously; you can have a break in a trial and come back a few days later, and not have to manage the jury in that sense. There are cost consequences, but there are also scheduling and efficiency consequences that we harness. More than 95% of our cases are judge-alone, but there is a mechanism by which the individuals can choose judge or jury. We put that in the hands of the accused. By and large, they choose judge.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I am aware of that distinction. Distinguished academics such as Professor Hoyano have made the point about the distinction with the system that we are bringing forward, where we are removing the right to elect. I understand that in your system, it is the defendant who elects. It is right, is it not, that many defendants actually elect for judge-alone?

Doug Downey: Absolutely true—they do elect for that. There are different advantages for them, including the speed of the matter. There are advantages for our system in terms of the cost of the matter and getting people to a just outcome. It is more than an academic exercise in terms of what is fair, but people do choose that. I can tell you that we track the court of appeal pieces, and more often the appeal is because a jury has been misinstructed. Judges, trained properly, when they come to the bench, can segregate out things that need to be segregated out, but you cannot always do that with a jury.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q The point about the pace at which the trial moves is an issue of contention. Some people say that having judge-alone for the same type of case will not save time compared with a jury trial. In your experience, once the election has been made by the defendant within the Canadian system, how much time is saved for the same sort of case with a judge-alone trial as opposed to a full jury trial?

Doug Downey: At a minimum, months. There is no question but that it is faster, from the data and anecdotally. It is not just our jurisdiction; other jurisdictions in Canada have similar experiences; British Columbia, on our west coast, is a good example. There is absolutely no question. You can move through motions in the middle of trials without disrupting, and you can do preliminary hearings beforehand and not have to redo something in front of a jury, because the judge has already heard that part. There are systemic advantages for time.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Other Committee members want to come in, but I want to ask you about fairness and, importantly, the perceived fairness and confidence that communities have in the system. On my visit to Toronto, it struck me what a diverse city it is. I believe that 50% of the residents of greater Toronto were born outside Canada. Is that something that you measure? Can you help the Committee understand the confidence that the public has in judge-alone trials?

Doug Downey: There are two parts to that. First, clearly, people are choosing judge-alone. On its own, the fact that the accused are choosing judge-alone speaks to the confidence they have in that system. There have been studies, such as the national justice survey in 2023 and 2025. Half the respondents to those studies indicated that they are moderately to very confident that our criminal justice system is fair to all people, and more than half—59%, to be exact—reported being moderately to very confident that the criminal justice system is accessible to all people. That is a fairly high number for people who are experiencing the system or know people who are experiencing the system.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you, Mr Downey, for your time today. I profess my ignorance of the Canadian justice system—it will stay with me forever that I do not know exactly how it works. Is the lay element in your criminal courts just 5% of all criminal cases?

Doug Downey: Are you talking about the non-lawyers who are hearing—

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[Dr Mullan]

Q Let me move away from the court to policing, which obviously is the area that you are most familiar with. What one or two things could policing do better, or be allowed to do differently, to enable you to shorten the timeframe on your side of a victim’s journey?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I am really conscious that the Bill takes it from the point of charge and into the court system. We are working with the Crown Prosecution Service and in policing to see how we can decrease the time from the point of the recording of the crime to when we actually get a charge. There are initiatives going on with the Crown Prosecution Service, so maybe more will come into policing for charging. Some work is being done on redaction and on rebuttable presumption disclosure. There are a number of pilots going on to see how we can streamline the system to make that part as short as possible, recognising that no matter what we do there—and there is complexity in policing in terms of the investigations, the digital forensics and the third-party evidence that all adds to the delay—once there is a charge, there is a challenge in how you get through the process as quickly as possible, so that we do not have victims and witnesses who are not prepared to give evidence because of delays.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q It would be helpful for the Committee to understand the impact that the delays, which I think we all agree are intolerable, are having on policing generally. If you could speak to some of your first-hand experience of that, it would be helpful.

Chief Constable Hatchett: I talked briefly about the witness care units, which have had an increasing demand placed upon them since 2019-20. There are two other areas. There is greater demand on investigators. We are managing a growing number of caseloads for an extended period of time. If you think about the requirement of the prosecution team, we are obliged to continually review evidence, so the longer it takes to go through the court process, the more reviews are required. That requires rework. That also could mean changes to the officer on the case or the prosecutor, which then asks for additional work. From an investigation perspective, there is an impact on policing.

The management of risk in the community also falls to police, as I mentioned. You will have individuals who are remanded by police. They are remanded into the court process; a proportion of them will be then taken to prison, so they will be managed within the prison estate. However, the vast majority of the individuals will not go into the prison system. They will either be on conditional or unconditional bail. A proportion of them—about 9,500—are on a court tag. That means that they would have gone into the prison system if not for the fact that they had tags with conditions associated with them. Then, if there are breaches in relation to the tags or the conditional bail, that adds on to policing, which is then expected to manage those individuals, arrest them and take them back into the court process.

It is not just the investigations, and it is not just the victim care side of things; it is the management of risk in the community. We sometimes do that with risk assessments, and we do it with multi-agency public protection arrangements and multi-agency working, but there is still that risk, and we are managing that risk for longer.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q The independent review of the criminal courts referred to the genesis of the crisis that we are in. It has been driven by covid and cuts to spending and investment, but another driver that Sir Brian Leveson and his team have pointed out, which may explain why trials for the same sorts of case are taking twice as long now as they did 20 years ago, is the complexity of the evidence. We all carry around a smartphone now. From a policing point of view, can you give us an idea of how that affects policing work?

Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. Because we carry around a phone and we have computers, laptops and a whole host of other electronic items, the investment in digital forensics for policing has been exponential. The types of offence that digital-enabled crime allows for are prioritised. You would expect child abuse cases and so on to get the priority because of the risk, including offenders’ risk to other children, but all forces across England and Wales have had to put significant investment into digital forensics.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Coupled with the procedural safeguards—things like the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and what have you, which we all think are a good thing—that driver of demand is not going away. Unlike covid, which thankfully has dissipated, it is now a permanent feature of our criminal justice system, I take it.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. We sometimes get better at what we do with it and I suppose the innovations become better, which may enable us to interrogate devices quicker. We hope that will come in time and we invest in the technology to do that, but the reality is that we live in a digital age. That goes across the board for us all.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you for being here. Your police officers are at the coalface. They often experience these adjournments and see victims let down at the final hurdle when they are about to have their day in court. What is your assessment of why cases are so often adjourned in our Crown courts?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I think there are multiple reasons. There are people who are far better qualified to give you evidence on that; undoubtedly you will have spoken to defence lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service, who can probably give you some really good evidence.

There are a whole host of reasons why cases are adjourned. Sometimes it is evidence, sometimes it is witnesses and victims, sometimes it is disclosure, sometimes it is court time—the reasons are multiple, but ultimately victims and witnesses are suffering as a consequence. My witness care units then have to pick up the conversations with those victims and witnesses to prepare them, hoping to keep them on board and confident enough in the criminal justice system to give evidence at a future date.

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[Dr Mullan]

Q You have given two, which is great. Would you agree that neither of those has anything to do with jury trials?

Daniel Flury: Yes.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Thank you for being here, Mr Flury. You have clearly mentioned that certainty on uncapped sitting days is hugely valuable to the system. You have mentioned a number of the areas where efficiencies, as I understand, are being made and developed with HMCTS, including prisoner transfer and better case co-ordination. We know that there are also plans to introduce blitz courts from 1 April. Would you care to expand on any of that to explain how HMCTS is gearing up and getting ready to deliver greater efficiencies in the system, so that it can bring down the backlog?

Daniel Flury: I can, but may I begin by saying a bit about why certainty is so important for the courts, in particular? We go through this annual round—what we call the concordat process—where we discuss with the MOJ and the judiciary the amount of funding that HMCTS gets. That has been an annual process, so we operate on an annual cycle.

Now that we have certainty over three years, it means quite a considerable amount to us. It means that we can confidently list over the next three years, so we can say to recorders whom we are trying to book now, “Look, this case is going to get on, and this date is going to be sat. We have the money to do this.” Having that certainty to book Crown court recorders and to recruit both staff and judges is a really important step for us.

I will come back to the question about the other things that we are doing to improve efficiency. We are about to roll out case co-ordinators, which is another recommendation in the Leveson report. These are people in the Crown court who will actively manage the case, and who will be able to make decisions on behalf of the judge using delegated powers. They will really corral the system together to drive efficiency and drive readiness in a case.

There is a whole variety of what we call blitz courts, which I would almost describe as a bet on the system. We try to brigade a number of cases that we know will either plead guilty or be discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Under the direction of the judges, we list those cases, knowing that they will be disposed of there and then. This essentially brings those cases forward on the hope and expectation—we use data to establish what could plead out—that it will give us an opportunity to clear them from the caseload. The product of that is not only reducing the caseload but indicating to the system, particularly the defendants, that their case is not going to languish for three or four years in places like London. It means that it will come on, and they have a far greater incentive to plead guilty knowing that the trial is a bit more proximate.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q You have mentioned a number of ways in which HMCTS is pursuing greater efficiencies in the Crown court. Can you share with the Committee the work that HMCTS is doing with regard to growing capacity in the magistrates court? One of the effects of these reforms, if they make their way through Parliament, will be that some cases that would have gone to the Crown court will be diverted to the magistrates court. One question I have been asked in Parliament is about the important role that legal advisers play. Can you explain what HMCTS is doing to ensure that we maintain efficiency and grow capacity in the magistrates court?

Daniel Flury: One of our biggest challenges in this whole programme is the need to expand operations in the magistrates court, particularly the numbers of legal advisers and magistrates we have. We expect to recruit 100 additional legal advisers every year for the next three years, and the critical thing for us is to make them stay and retain them—we have seen lots of our legal advisers go off to local authorities or the CPS. We are working closely with our trade unions at the moment on potentially improving their pay to improve retention, and we are devising development schemes, so we are hopefully going to offer pupillage to our barrister legal advisers.

We are also supporting them in court. For example, we have recently developed a pilot using AI, where you take a case summary—what is called an IDPC pack, or initial details of the prosecution case—and it essentially summarises that case for the legal adviser. It tells them what the relevant points of law are and what the facts are in the case. These are ways in which we are both improving the efficiency of the magistrates court and improving the working conditions of legal advisers, because they really are critical if we are going to expand the magistrates court in this way.

[Mr Kohler]

Q To return to something you said in answer to the shadow Minister, how effective do you think the prisoner escort and custody service is?

Daniel Flury: I think we all agree that there is room for improvement. We have had lots of testimony, certainly from Crown courts, about late starts and subsequent late finishes. That obviously affects not only the hearing but our staff, who have longer working days. I think we are all seized of the importance of driving improvements—there is now a ministerial board, which HMCTS sits on, to work with the prisoner service to improve the service we get. The service itself will be retendered in the next couple of years, and we hope improvements will arise from that, but it is certainly a factor in court output, and certainly in late sittings and late starts, particularly in the London Crown courts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

I will come back to you if I get time.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I would like to ask questions of the panel in relation to the practicality of what is being proposed, but also the principle. This is a question for all of you. Do you accept that in our system pragmatism has always determined which prosecutions are heard with a jury and which are determined by judges or magistrates?

Sir Richard Henriques: Not much pragmatism as gravity, I think. The more serious cases will remain, pursuant to Sir Brian’s review, with juries. I heard the question “Are you trying to do away with juries?” earlier this afternoon. It is critical that the public do not think that we are doing away with juries. What is happening is a matter of pragmatism, as you say. Something has to change. The backlog has gone from 17,400 cases exactly six years ago to 80,000 now, and cases are being listed for four or five years’ time. Something has to be done. For my part, I agree with Lord Burnett: I would have preferred a judge and two magistrates. But something has to be done, and if judge alone is the only option, I am 100% in favour of it. I have no doubt that it will work and that it will save far more time than the Bar contends it will save. It will save a lot of time.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q That is the point that I want to alight on. Lord Burnett, you were part of the Times crime and justice commission, which produced its report in 2025. The state of play now is even more dire, but you reached a similar conclusion: that the status quo is not something that we can continue to live with, and that courts without juries, whatever the composition—judge alone or judge sitting with two magistrates—could bring about swifter justice. Does that remain your view, Lord Burnett?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Yes, it certainly is my view. To be perfectly blunt, I am rather astonished by some of what I have been reading from people who I do not think are necessarily focusing on the evidence of what happens.

I do not know whether the Committee is hearing from any magistrates or from district judges who sit in the magistrates court and the youth court, but they will tell you that either-way cases in the magistrates court and the youth court—of course, the youth court also does indictable offences—very rarely go beyond half a day. In the Crown court—Judge Goldstone will, I hope, be able to give you more detail—very few cases take less than a day and a half. That is not only because of the time-and-motion calculable time that having a jury involves, but because the way that advocates conduct cases in front of professional courts is completely different from the way they conduct cases in front of juries. It is much quicker, and a professional court can get the advocates to focus on the real issues, whereas in the Crown court the judge cannot interfere. I am convinced that the time saving will be enormous if the relatively low-level cases are tried by a new constitution. The same savings clearly would not be made in a 10-day or 15-day trial but that is, I think, not what we are looking at.

[Sarah Sackman]

No, that is not what is in the Bill. Mr Goldstone, I noticed you were nodding. Do you want to come in?

Clement Goldstone: I had the advantage of listening with interest to the three circuit leaders straight after lunch today. They will probably never speak to me again, but I have to say that I did not recognise the validity of the argument that time would not be saved.

Time will be saved in a number of ways. First, a lot of defendants who would otherwise have been tried by a jury and taken their chance will be far more realistic and take whatever credit is going if they know that they are going to be dealt with by a new division, whether it is one or three. Secondly, in my experience it is wrong to confine the savings, or the assessment of the savings, to empanelling and swearing in a jury. That is where it begins.

Every sex case, I suspect probably nationally, now comes before the court with a direction that there will be no witnesses before 2.15 pm on the first day or, if the case is starting at 2.15 pm, until 10.30 the following morning. If there is no jury, there is no bar to the evidence starting within 10 or 15 minutes, because if there is to be an opening at all, it can be very brief—and I mean very brief. Half a day, at least, will be saved on every sex case that is heard in the Crown court. That is before you start with time lost as a result of jury sickness, or a juror being delayed because his train has been cancelled or her bus was delayed. It is also easier to call a witness out of order if you are not trying to take a jury through in the order in which the evidence would otherwise be called. You do not need to worry about engaging with counsel to ensure that they stick to and get to the point. They will realise that they will not be playing to the gallery as, with the best will in the world, we have all been inclined to do in the past when we have had a jury to try to convince, particularly if we have a bad case.

I also do not accept that there will be additional time spent in the writing of judgments. The vast majority of decisions will follow the conclusion of the defence speech: ex tempore judgments in the overwhelming majority of cases or, in those very rare cases where something needs to be put into detailed construction, a verdict followed by a decision in writing, before sentence if there has been a conviction, within the next seven days if there has been an acquittal. There may be plenty of reasons why the restriction on the right to jury trial is not a good idea, but to suggest that time will not be saved is, in my view, not one of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Great. Thank you very much; I appreciate that.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I, too, have questions for the IfG and I agree—thank you very much for both your reports, which are incredibly helpful. As you have just acknowledged and as you acknowledge on page 2 of your supplementary report, there is actually a good deal of consensus both on the merits and soundness of the approach, which we in Government had externally quality assured based on the available data. I think you would accept, as we do, that some of the behavioural changes likely to flow from a reformed system are, as Sir Brian himself said earlier in evidence, quite difficult to model because they are not currently in place.

Cassia Rowland: That is absolutely true. We do not know what is likely to happen on plea rates or dropped cases. A lot of cases are dropped at the moment, partly because of the length of delays. The modelling makes certain assumptions about how that might change, but there is a lot of uncertainty there. There is definitely uncertainty in both directions, but what we do not and cannot really capture in modelling in the short to medium term is the effect of the reforms themselves and the disruption that that potentially creates in the system, in the form of short-term productivity and performance problems.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q You have proposed that thesis, and I will come to that in a moment. You make the point about the disruption that might be caused by bringing in changes, but you also make the assumption that productivity levels can be restored to 2016 levels; that is what we want to get back to. But of course, as we heard from earlier witnesses from the Bar, quite a lot has changed since 2016. In particular, there is something that you alight on—I think that is really useful—which is what has happened to the workforce. We heard that a quarter of publicly funded silks have dropped out of the profession. We know that in other strands of the Bar the attrition rate has been even higher. Indeed, on page 5 of your report, you tell us:

“The shortage of criminal lawyers is a crucial source of productivity problems in the criminal courts…with 4%”—

this is more than 1,000 cases—

“of all scheduled crown court trials in 2024 rescheduled on the day because the prosecution or defence lawyer was absent.”

For what it is worth, I agree with that analysis—it is really helpful. However, even with the massive investment that the Government are making, in both criminal pupillages and legal aid, it is not realistic to suppose that we can address that workforce shortage in anything other than years. It takes years to train a barrister; it takes years to recruit lots of judges, does it not?

Cassia Rowland: indicated assent.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Do you agree with me, on that major productivity driver that we need to address, that it will take years before we see that productivity gain?

Cassia Rowland: It does need to be a long-term programme. There are some things that you can do in the short term, and we have already seen that. Just in the last couple of years, there has been an increase in publicly funded criminal barristers receiving legal aid income and so on.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q But not in anything like the numbers that we would need to address this issue.

Cassia Rowland: No, it is not what you would need, but you also have to take it into account that there are risks on the other side with some of these proposals, which would reduce the amount of publicly funded work existing in the system. Potentially you could lose people from the criminal Bar. There is the risk of making things worse, so you do also have to balance that.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q There is no disagreement between us on the fact that we need to drive greater productivity and we want to get back to a higher target. I think where the disagreement comes is on the air of realism as to how long that will take. I think that in your original report you assumed that an 18% productivity gain could be achieved overnight. We simply do not assume that. We think that it is years away, because of the workforce. In the meantime the backlog continues to go up. The conclusion of the independent review of the criminal courts is that investment, productivity gains and reform are the only ways we get the backlog down. Do you agree that productivity and investment alone will not bring down the backlog?

Cassia Rowland: I do not think I necessarily agree with that. It will take time but, respectfully, the proposals in this Bill will also take years. There are measures that you can do on the productivity side that will be faster than some of the measures contained in the Bill. A case co-ordinator role, for instance, is really fantastic; we are very strongly supportive of that.

[Sarah Sackman]

Thank you.

Cassia Rowland: We are always banging the drum for more back office and admin staff at the IfG. I worry that some of these reform programmes will move productivity in the wrong direction, in a way that may counteract the benefits of the structural reforms.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q I do not want to hog the microphone, but I want to understand something about APPEAL and JUSTICE. We have had quite a lot of engagement, particularly with JUSTICE—there was a suggestion that there was no engagement with JUSTICE, or that we could tell you what to think about anything. I think you have been to a number of roundtables in the MOJ, and we have met a number of times. Just to check, you are not an organisation that interacts or provides services directly to victims, are you?

Fiona Rutherford: We do not do that, no.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Is the same thing true for APPEAL?

Emma Torr: Yes, but you have to understand that if you—

[Sarah Sackman]

Yes, you do provide services to victims.

Emma Torr: We provide services to individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. You could classify people like Andrew Malkinson and Peter Sullivan as victims, because they have suffered horrendous miscarriages of justice, so in that sense we do.

[Sarah Sackman]

I would not disagree with that for one second.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q Thank you all for being here. It is very helpful to have your views as part of today’s evidence gathering. Do any of you share concerns that there is a lower level of legal aid available in the magistrates court, and that that could have an impact when magistrates hear cases that carry higher sentences?

Fiona Rutherford: Yes, and I referred earlier to the impact of having more litigants in person, which would be the impact of there being fewer lawyers representing defendants in the magistrates court. If you are looking at it from a victim’s perspective, one of the key things is that you will get the cross-examination directly from the defendant in court. Equally, there are some issues with the way that appeals will take place. At the moment, as Emma has said, there is a reliance on the lawyers to really lead the way with those appeals—that is possibly why only 1% of appeals go from the magistrates to the Crown court.

Without a lawyer being present, and of course without there even being the right to appeal directly, you are leaving a whole load of defendants, who may well be wrongly convicted or may get the wrong sentence for the crime they have committed, floundering. From what we know, either about the legislation or the policy that sits around it, I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward. There are a number of ramifications of legal aid being an issue in the magistrates court, or of there not being enough legal aid.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q One of the examples you gave was the Elbit case. The indictment there was an indictable-only offence. There were multiple charges, but the case contained an indictable-only offence, so it would have received a jury trial under our reformed system anyway. I took the liberty to check: in the case that you cited, there would have been a jury trial under our reformed system, would there not?

Tim Crosland: You mean in the Official Secrets Act case?

[Sarah Sackman]

In the one that you cited.

Tim Crosland: In the Ponting case?

[Sarah Sackman]

No, not in the Ponting case. In the recent Elbit case.

Tim Crosland: No, these were criminal damage cases.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q It was not purely criminal damage. There were indictable-only offences. That particular case would have still received a jury trial.

Tim Crosland: There have been a number of these cases. Mainly, they are either way, because they are usually criminal damage cases. The case now—as it remains, because there is a retrial—is criminal damage, and these are either-way cases. On the tests as set out in the Bill, mainly—and we have a lot of evidence of this—a judge would say that this would be less than three years, because it is mostly spray paint and relatively low-level damage. We have seen cases of high-level damage too, but it is never more than three years.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q But the point is that low-level damage would receive a magistrates trial anyway. What I am talking about is the scope between us. We are talking about a threshold change applicable to a relatively narrow group of cases, which is intended in part to address the backlogs. Those are not just backlogs in terms of delays in our courts; they also impact on the remand population, which is something that I know you will be concerned about. The amount of time that people are remanded in jail, including for crimes that they did not commit, is another aspect of this when we are talking about addressing the backlogs. Is that something that concerns you?

Tim Crosland: Of course it is, but the proposition here is neutral to the wider argument about addressing the backlog. It is about a very niche number of cases where people have taken action to expose Government or corporate wrongdoing. The impact of this proposal is that they would no longer be tried by a cross-section of their peers; they would be tried by someone who, ultimately, is paid by the state, where we all know what the outcome will be, because judges in those trials have directed juries, as far as they possibly can, that there is no defence.

Most of these acquittals have involved a jury going, “Hang on a second. I’ve listened to the evidence over a week or two, and I’m satisfied that these people took action because they were desperate and felt that there was no option for getting the truth into the public domain to counter the disinformation of”—for example—“the fossil fuel companies.” Those jury acquittals then send an important signal to politicians that when the public actually get good information—let’s say about the nature of the climate emergency—they are shocked at Government inaction. Those acquittals are meaningful in a profound way, and we will not have them any more. It will just be guilty, guilty, guilty.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q On your point about challenge, I do not think anyone in this room would dispute the importance of the right to protest. There is a difference where that breaks the law. The Government are fierce defenders of the independence of our judiciary, which often finds against the Government. That may be uncomfortable and we may disagree, but we have to take it on the chin. I do not doubt for one second the fierce independence of our judiciary. You said that we should make an exception for a niche group of cases but, fundamentally, what is the difference between someone who has broken the law—public order laws or otherwise—and a working-class defendant from a marginalised community? Why should they be treated any differently under our criminal justice system?

Tim Crosland: I think that is a good question—

[Sarah Sackman]

It is a good question. Can you answer it?

Tim Crosland: I want to talk particularly about cases where people are saying—like Clive Ponting and many activists did—that the motivation for taking the action is that what the state is doing is insufficient to protect the public. That is a fundamentally different situation. Look at the Colston situation: who better to decide whether that action crossed a threshold than a cross-section of Bristol residents, who would understand better than anybody in this room the impact of that statue on that community? That would not happen any more; it would be a paid judge deciding. In my submission, it is precisely those cases where a jury trial is a democratic imperative and where you would lose something really profound.

To answer your question, I would not wish to say that other people should not have a jury trial. I am not saying that at all; I am just making a particular argument for these cases.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q I have a very simple question: what are the risks of ignoring campaigners like you when we talk about fundamentally changing the way we do jury trials?

Tim Crosland: The risk is to democracy and to people’s confidence in democracy in cases that explore the boundaries between public interest, the right to protest and criminal law. We lose the essence of democratic rights if people know that they will not get a trial before their peers. It is a very profound danger. It was only in 2024 after 69-year-old retired social worker Trudi Warner had been arrested and prosecuted for holding up a sign outside London Crown court that the High Court said that juries were entitled to acquit as a matter of conscience. Her case came before the High Court, which dismissed the Government’s prosecution of her and said that jury equity is a vital principle of our democracy and she was right to uphold it. It was part of her convention rights. We lose that principle if we ignore protesters when we look at this legislation.