Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the sitting time of courts to reflect the working day of eight hours.

Across the Crown Court in England and Wales, social distancing has restricted physical capacity, meaning judges have not been able to sit at maximum levels, and the outstanding national caseload has grown. However, our action led to us being among the first of comparable international jurisdictions to re-start jury trials, and in recent weeks the outstanding caseload in the Crown Court has begun to reduce. To achieve this, we have pushed our estate to the limits within the confines of social distancing and scrutinised every possible option to maximise court productivity. We simultaneously enabled remote hearings, made the estate safe, acquired new spaces, and legislated to ensure justice could continue.

To further increase capacity within our existing estate, we are also exploring the number of hours courts can sit as a time-restricted measure to recover from the pandemic. Last year we piloted COVID Operating Hours at seven Crown Court sites and undertook a full assessment.

It remains under consideration whether some form of this model could be a useful measure in hearing more cases within Crown courts where judges want to do so.