Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to tackle the backlog in court cases that involve defendants who are parents or caregivers.

The Government is committed to supporting the recovery of the courts to reduce the backlog of cases and improve timeliness for all court users, including defendants who are parents or caregivers.

Listing is a judicial function and judges continue to work to prioritise cases involving vulnerable complainants and witnesses, to seek to ensure that domestic abuse, serious sex cases and those with vulnerable witnesses (including youth cases) are listed at the first available opportunity, as well as custody time limit cases.

We have extended 30 Nightingale courtrooms beyond the end of March 2022 and removed the limit on the number of days the Crown Court can sit in the 2021/22 financial year. In the magistrates’ court, we are taking a flexible approach to the listing of cases so that we use our court estate as efficiently as possible. To secure enough capacity to sit at the required levels in 2022/23 and beyond we are expanding our plans for judicial recruitment: we plan to recruit 102 Circuit Judges, 105 Recorders, and 4,000 new magistrates over the three-year Spending Review period (2022-25).

These measures are already working, and as a result we expect to get through 20% more Crown Court cases this financial year than we did pre-Covid. Following an increase in funding as part of the Ministry of Justice’s Spending Review settlement, including £477m for recovery in the criminal courts, we aim to reduce the number of outstanding cases in the Crown Court to 53,000 by March 2025.