Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims — House of Commons, 2021-06-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): I would advise any Member of Parliament to do everything they can to support victims in their constituency to pursue prosecution. I will talk in a few minutes about some of the measures we are taking to speed up the justice system further and help and support victims, particularly women victims and victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, but we should all encourage and support our constituents. I know the hon. Lady would do that; I am sure she is doing it, as of course we all do, and I will discuss some of those measures in just a moment I was talking, however, about the action we are taking to ensure that justice is delivered and that victims like the hon. Lady’s constituent can have confidence. In addition to those 20,000 remote hearings a week, speeding up justice for people like the hon. Lady’s constituent, we now have covid-safe measures in 450 courtrooms. We have opened up 60 Nightingale courtrooms around the country. We have got super-courts coming to hear multi-hander trials. And to support victims such as the hon. Lady’s constituent we are spending this year across Government, not just in the MOJ, £300 million to give victims the support, encouragement and help they need, exactly as the hon. Lady was saying a moment ago These actions have delivered results. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) said in her excellent speech, despite these difficulties the England and Wales jurisdiction is leading the world in court recovery. Many jurisdictions have barely restarted jury trials. We restarted jury trials in May of last year, and we were the first jurisdiction of our kind to do so. Backlogs in other jurisdictions are far higher than ours when we adjust for size. Talking about our jurisdictions, in the magistrates court—let us start there—the outstanding caseload is dropping now by about 2,000 cases a week. The outstanding caseload at one point, at the height of the pandemic back in the summer of last year, went up to 525,000. As the shadow Justice Secretary said in his remarks, it is now back down to 460,000. About half of the extra caseload caused by covid has now been removed, and every single week it is relentlessly going down further. That is thanks to the work of our magistrates, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), who sits on the bench in Merseyside. I pay tribute to him and his colleagues for the work they have done in reducing that outstanding caseload in magistrates courts week in and week out The Crown court is obviously more difficult because jury trials and pandemics do not very well mix, and the number of outstanding cases has gone up. However, I can report to the House that the level of disposals—[Interruption.] I am coming on to that. The level of disposals now in the Crown court is running above the pre-covid level. It is running about 5% above the pre-covid level, as of the week commencing 25 April, which was just a few weeks ago. The most recent management data we have—it is not yet published, and is subject, of course, to verification—from the last few weeks now shows the outstanding caseload beginning to turn the corner and decline as these measures take effect.