Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase court capacity in (a) Newport West constituency and (b) Wales.

Recovering from the impacts of Covid-19 and keeping our court and tribunal premises safe and open is HMCTS’ top priority. We have introduced a range of important measures to increase available court capacity, including the installation of plexiglass screens, the opening of Nightingale courts and use of virtual hearings.

In Wales we have opened a Nightingale court at Swansea Civic Centre, providing additional Crown Court capacity. We have installed temporary modular buildings at Caernarfon and Swansea Crown Courts to facilitate jury trials by creating additional space for deliberation, and we are utilising space at Cardiff City Hall to house jurors in waiting, thus enabling more courtrooms in Cardiff Crown Court to accommodate jury trials. We have also completed estates work that has increased our ability to hear multi-handler trials by increasing defendant dock capacity across four Crown courtrooms in Wales.

In Newport, all Crown and Magistrates Courts rooms are open with social distancing measures in place. We have also conducted estates work to increase Crown Court defendant capacity for multi-handed trials so that the court can now hear cases with up to seven defendants. Similarly, all Civil, Family and Tribunal sites in Newport are open and remote hearings are also being effectively utilised.

We continue to keep our recovery plans for Wales and Newport under close review.