Nick Timothy

I do not accept that characterisation of magistrates courts. If that were a true cause for concern for the hon. Lady, this Bill would perhaps try to address what she says, yet it does not. The Government’s claims about what the Bill will achieve are hopelessly confused. The Justice Secretary leans heavily on Sir Brian Leveson, who says that limiting jury trials will save 20% of court time, but there has been no modelling to justify this number, and Sir Brian has admitted that it is little more than a guess. When challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), the Justice Secretary said, “We will…publish our modelling alongside the…Bill”.—[Official Report, 3 February 2026; Vol. 780, c. 109.] Yet no modelling worthy of the name has been published. The impact assessment takes Sir Brian’s guess and uses it as the median estimate. This is fiction masquerading as science. The Criminal Bar Association calls the impact assessment “meaningless verbiage”, “total gibberish” and something that “would make the script writer of ‘In the Thick of it’ wince with embarrassment”. It concludes: “If anyone can make any sense of this, please get in touch.” If the Justice Secretary wanted to accept that invitation right now, I would be willing to give way to him—but he does not. The Government have overstated the length of trials for cases in scope of the proposed change by more than 100%. The better estimate has been made by the Institute for Government, where researchers have listened to judges and lawyers and understood that only 20% of Crown court time is spent trying either-way offences. Of course, half of those cases will remain jury trials because the likely sentence is above three years. The cases in scope therefore take up only 5% to 10% of Crown court time, so even if they could be tried 20% faster, it would save only 1% or 2% of court time.