Significant investment needed to improve court capacity, say MPs 

MPs have found that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) have “missed opportunities to swiftly deliver an ambitious court reform programme”, arguing that many of the problems now being experienced “could have been avoided if better data collection had been built into the system much earlier”.

The justice select committee report on court capacity, published in April following an inquiry launched in July 2020, bemoaned the lack of data or analysis undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, such as improved digital access, saying it impacted on the quality of evidence they were able to take.

The committee said that, as part of the reform programme, HMCTS was rolling out the Common Platform in the criminal courts and Core Case Data in the civil courts, family courts and tribunals. It recognised the MoJ and HMCTS were taking steps to improve the data situation but stressed that “the level of improvement required will need a sustained focus and significant investment”.

The committee recommended that the government publish an update on the progress made on each project within the court reform programme, with completion dates and anticipated final cost.

On the physical court estate, MPs said the government should develop a comprehensive plan to improve quality, “funded on a multi-year basis”. The plan should “identify solutions for delivering essential maintenance without reducing physical capacity”.

To monitor court performance, an independent courts inspectorate should be re-established, covering all courts, and the government should set out the number of Crown Court trials that would be needed every month to cut the backlog sufficiently for the target of 53,000 outstanding cases by March 2025 to be achieved.

There should be further targets on times from an offence being recorded to the ultimate conclusion and increased capacity for the Crown Court so it could deliver at least 110,000 sitting days a year for the next five years.

The MPs called for a detailed plan on increasing the number of Crown Court judges and said the government should produce an action plan on how it was going to expand family court capacity, together with a target on how outstanding cases could be reduced by 2025.

Responding the report, CILEX chair Professor Chris Bones suggested that one immediate way of tackling the backlog would be to increase the pool of prosecuting lawyers by removing the legislative barrier that prevents CILEX associate prosecutors from becoming Crown prosecutors.

He said: “At present, there are far too many capable and qualified lawyers, many acting as associate prosecutors, who can’t progress their careers to become Crown prosecutors. If the legislative barrier on CILEX members’ eligibility to become Crown prosecutors was removed, a new supply line of lawyers to meet the justice crisis would be enabled, with the public purse actually saving money by removing the needless present route of retraining them to become solicitors in order to do so.”