Criminal Courts: Independent Review

Tristan Osborne Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for this debate. He will be aware that there have been a number of debates on this salient issue here and in the other place. Nationally, the court backlog across England and Wales now exceeds 78,000. It is a problem that has been inherited, but we need to acknowledge it and face up to the challenge.

In my local area, Maidstone Crown court has 2,500 cases outstanding, while Canterbury has 1,000. I have met victims as well as those working on the frontline of the criminal justice system, and I acknowledge some operational challenges that I intend to raise today. Every single case we have heard from colleagues represents real people—real victims and defendants who are not getting their time in court. Defendants are suffering the concurrent mental health conditions of waiting for a sentence and victims are not getting redress.

As my colleague from the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), rightly said, if we do not tackle this issue, it is predicted to get worse, with 100,000 cases by 2030 if no changes are made. I welcome the Government’s announcements of an extra £92 million for legal aid so far this year and an additional 4,000 court sitting days, taking us to 111,000. That is a necessary step, but it is also right that we have commissioned Sir Brian Leveson, one of our most distinguished judges, to conduct a wholesale review of our criminal courts, and it is in an independent spirit that he has come forward with these guidelines.

There are 45 recommendations. I think it is eminently sensible that we look at out-of-court resolutions to a number of cases where the sentencing is below a certain threshold. The two-year threshold is sensible; it could be higher, but the Government will need to take a balanced approach on that when they respond to part 1 of the report.

I also think that the reclassification to summary-only offences, so that magistrates get more responsibility, is eminently sensible, because at the moment the number of referrals going into Crown courts is simply too high. The creation of a dedicated Crown court bench commission is a sensible next step; I look forward to seeing how that will work in practice, given that we have logistical and staff constraints within this sector at present. I understand that the recruitment of 6,000 extra staff might be required, which will be a challenge. The incentivising of early resolution through sentence reductions is also sensible—it is a practice we are already employing, but it can be expanded. Of course, all these suggestions will only reduce cases by 9,000 court sittings per annum on average, so it is right that we are speaking to the public about these issues and I look forward to the Government response.

I have one minute left. I have spoken to the Minister in previous Westminster Hall debates about my local courts in Kent. There are some operational issues as well, and I acknowledge some of the concerns raised by colleagues, including the increasing use of digital technologies in courts and the improvement in capital finance to improve court premises, some of which are falling apart, and to fix leaking roofs. I have also raised independently the movement of cases across artificial geographical boundaries, so that we can spread caseloads across other parts of the county and other regions. There must also be greater support, including greater human resources support, for justice offices and casework officers working in our court systems, so that we can get the cases through.

I will continue partnership work with the Government, but I welcome part 1 of Leveson’s report and I encourage Members to support it.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

The Front Benchers have 10 minutes each and I intend to call the mover of the motion with a couple of minutes to sum up the debate.