Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effect of the transfer of multi-hander trials on the length delays to outstanding cases in regions where those multi-hander trials were transferred to.

Listing is a judicial function and the decision as to whether a case is heard within the same region as the alleged offence, or within another region, is a judicial one.

In general terms the more defendants involved in a case the lengthier the trial is likely to be. Due to requirements for social distancing, multi-hander trials are particularly challenging where dock sizes are not able to accommodate the number of persons required to appear. The Crown Court is using a range of solutions to overcome these challenges, such as using multiple courtrooms to hear multi-hander jury trials or transferring the case to another court that can accommodate larger sized trials.

In addition to opening temporary Nightingale courts, we are ensuring we have additional capacity to alleviate the pressure on courts by increasing capacity in existing courtrooms to hear multi-hander trials. Around 70 courtrooms have been approved, subject to survey and value for money decisions, for modifications to increase capacity for listing multi-hander jury trials.