Government plans to tackle court backlog lack ambition, say MPs
Government plans to reduce the Crown Court case backlog are “unlikely to address unacceptable delays to justice for victims, witnesses, and defendants”, MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) said in March.
The case backlog has nearly doubled since March 2019 and since the first lockdown in 2020, the number of Crown Court cases waiting longer than a year has increased by more than 340%.
MPs were critical of the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) “meagre ambition” of reducing cases from 60,000 to 53,000 over the next three years.
The PAC said it “remains unconvinced” of the MoJ’s real intentions to reduce waiting times in the Crown Court, given the slow pace of recovery, and that there were “significant, systemic challenges” to clearing the backlog, including the numbers of trained judges, legal professionals and local staff to support criminal courts.
Reducing the backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 relied on increasing the number of days that the Crown Court hears cases, from 100,000 in 2021-22 to 105,000 in 2022-23, then 106,500 in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.
“This requires a significant increase in the number of judges, for which the department’s plan does not seem credible,” the PAC said.
“Its plans are predicated on successfully recruiting 78 full-time, salaried circuit judges. This is despite only filling 52 of 63 positions during the previous recruitment round.
“The resulting dependence on deploying criminal barristers and solicitors as part-time judges, as well as increasing the workload of part-time judges, to make up shortfall reduces much-needed capacity within the legal profession to prosecute and defend cases.”
The MPs also said they feared the MoJ would overlook the need to prioritise diversity amid efforts to boost the number of judges.
CILEX chair Professor Chris Bones said the report highlighted “the challenges facing the justice system in the wake of the pandemic” and stressed the role CILEX members have to play in increasing the number and the diversity of sitting judges.
“CILEX has put forward a number of actions which could make an immediate difference” he said. “We hope to see them included in the government’s programme of work as they go forward. These include proposals to increase the pipeline of CILEX judges to all judicial appointments, not just the lower tribunals.”