Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of resources available to effectively tackle court backlogs in the recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.

We have taken decisive action to ensure the courts have sufficient resources to tackle our outstanding caseloads in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

We spent over a quarter of a billion pounds on recovery last financial year, making court buildings safe, rolling out new technology for remote hearings and recruiting an additional 1,600 HMCTS staff. We will run each Crown Court site to its fullest, with no limit on sitting days this financial year, so more cases can be heard and waiting times can come down. Following the lifting of social distancing restrictions, we are in the process of fully reopening our existing physical estate. We have also extended 32 of our Nightingale courtrooms until March 2022 to maximise our sitting capacity this year.