Contribution
It is an honour to open the debate on the Report stage of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, and to bring this important piece of legislation back before the House. This is a Bill with victims at its heart. Its purpose is urgent and long overdue: to ensure that justice in this country is delivered fairly for both victims and defendants. Currently, thousands of victims, witnesses and defendants are trapped in the long, slow wait for justice. That is simply unfair. For some, justice may never come. The old maxim rings true in our country today: far too often, justice delayed is justice denied.
Occasionally, there are stories that stop one in one’s tracks. I appeared on “Newsnight” to explain the situation in our courts—backlogs reaching 80,000 and far too many people waiting for justice—and on that programme, I was confronted with the story of Morwenna Loughman. She spoke of the devastating impact that those court delays had had on her life. Morwenna was violently raped in February 2023. She was forced to wait over two years for her attacker to be convicted after her trial was cancelled not once, but twice at short notice. During that time, she lost her job, her home and her sense of self. Her story has stayed with me ever since—it is people exactly like Morwenna whom I have in my mind’s eye as I return to the House with this legislation. For far too many survivors, delays themselves have become another source of trauma. We cannot sit idly by; we have to act now to resolve this situation.
The Bill seeks to turn a crisis into an opportunity—an opportunity to rebuild a justice system that is swifter and stronger, and has victims’ voices at its core. We have the opportunity to rebuild a system that gives courts, rather than defendants, the ability to triage cases, and that transforms our approach to the culture around rape and serious sexual violence. That is the ambition of this Bill—not just to repair what is broken, but to build something better in its place.
This Government inherited a criminal justice system that was on its knees, with trials taking longer, hearings constantly cancelled and victims facing unacceptable delays. Years of inaction and under-investment had led to a courts system that, as Lord Leveson’s report concluded, was and remains simply unfit for purpose. Today, the Crown court backlog stands at almost 81,000 cases, and the pressure is growing. Cases themselves are increasingly complex, not least because of the growth of digital and forensic evidence. A single smartphone can hold the equivalent of 50 million printed pages, and this adds to disclosure, complexity, and the time it takes to reach a verdict. The police are arresting more criminals. We make absolutely no apologies for that, but a system that is already under strain cannot continue to absorb ever-rising demand without reform. Old structures are creaking under new volumes and new types of crime, and if we do not act, the situation will continue to spiral.
Not only are we failing victims, this situation and these unacceptable delays are corrosive of public trust in the justice system itself. We can and must do better. To do so, we need a sensible, principled and pragmatic approach. As we will no doubt hear, the Opposition have offered plenty of objections, but precious few answers to the reality facing our courts. We will not take lectures from the party that left the criminal justice system in this state. This Government have a plan: a serious package of measures designed to drive down the backlog and ensure that victims get the fast, timely and fair justice that they deserve. Lord Leveson’s conclusion in the independent review of criminal courts was clear that there is no silver bullet for addressing this problem. We need to pull every lever—investment, modernisation and structural reform—and this Government are doing precisely that.
Let me begin with investment. For a start, we have removed the financial limit on court sitting days. We have recruited more judges and magistrates. By uncapping Crown court sitting days—meaning that there is no financial limit on the number of cases that courts can hear—we have unleashed the potential of our Crown courts, which are hearing more cases than ever before. We are investing an additional £287 million in court repairs and digital upgrades, alongside record investment in criminal legal aid to support the solicitors and barristers who run our criminal cases, alongside a package of more than half a billion pounds for victim services over the next three years.
In addition, I am proud that we have announced a £23 million package to introduce specialist rape courts—a manifesto commitment—in every single Crown court centre. That will improve the experience of victims of rape and other sexual offences at court, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), whose bravery and determination has driven forward those changes.
Modernisation and efficiency matter, too. I abhor inefficiency. When I speak not just to victims, but to defendants and to people who work within the system, the wastefulness of ineffective trials is so frustrating. We hear stories of trials being put off because a prisoner was not produced on time or because counsel was unavailable. Working with the judiciary, we are modernising our system and we are throwing the kitchen sink at it.