Sarah Sackman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2026 · Court Transcripts · Hansard source

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  The Government are committed to greater transparency and access to justice in our courts. Transcripts are an important part of that, and I know that there has been a lot of cross-party campaigning on this issue. Victims of sexual offences and bereaved families of homicide can already request a free copy of sentencing remarks. From spring 2027, eligibility will be extended so that all victims can request them.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Court Transcripts · Hansard source

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  I know that the hon. Lady is a great advocate in this regard. I have had the pleasure of meeting Charlotte on a number of occasions, and I know how important her campaign is. The hon. Lady is right: owing to the Government’s commitment to audio recording and the capital investments that we are making to enable it to happen, change is coming soon and fast. We will seek to go as far as we are able while preserving the accuracy of those transcripts.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Court Transcripts · Hansard source

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  Equality before the law should mean just that, and as my hon. Friend says, it is an important principle to bear in mind when we talk about barriers to access to justice, whether we are talking about the cost of representation, which we try to address through legal aid, or about the cost of transcripts. In the current context, the targeted approach that we have taken—prioritising the victims of the most serious crimes, and now extending eligibility so that all victims can request court transcripts through the Sentencing Act 2026 from the spring of 2027—constitutes a big step forward. I hope that developments in technology will enable us to lower the costs and make that freely available to all in due course.

• 29 Jun 2026 · Home Office and Ministry of Justice · Hansard source

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  I associate myself with the remarks of those who have thanked the Chairs of the various Select Committees for securing this important debate, and I thank everybody who made incredibly thoughtful contributions to it, although there was the odd exception. To govern is to choose, and those on the Opposition— [ Interruption. ] I am coming to it. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) is getting started early. We know what choices the Opposition would make, because the Government’s inheritance in the criminal justice system was intolerable. Our prisons were allowed to run red hot so that the most serious offenders had nowhere to be locked up—a total dereliction of duty from the so-called party of law and order. In our courts, we had record and rising backlogs—there is consensus about that in the House—with both victims and defendants seeing intolerable delays. I could not agree more with the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that this is one system, and it must keep the public safe and command public confidence. Yes, indeed, justice delayed is justice denied. We see the brass-neckedness of Opposition Members—there is no apology—but this Government do not duck the choices. As I will come to, in both areas we have grasped the nettle. We have sought expert advice in the form of the independent review led by Sir Brian Leveson into the state of our criminal courts, and from David Gauke in relation to sentencing. We have heard the conclusions of those reviews, and yes, we have been prepared to make the tough choices required to put our justice system first and to put it on a stable footing. The context outlined by the hon. Member for North Cotswolds and astutely by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) is one in which for several decades justice has been relatively sidelined in public policy terms and in investment terms. That has changed under this Labour Government with the uplift in the capital budget, as hon. Members across the House have rightly acknowledged. That is seen in prison construction, the investment in our court estate, the investment in the technology required to bring our justice system into the 21st century and, indeed, in the vital intervention of uncapping sitting days to salvage our courts from the brink of collapse. That is the choice that the Government have made to put justice first and to fix the mess that the Opposition left us with. Let me turn first to the crisis in our courts. We have taken a multi-pronged approach to this issue, as is set out in the estimates Bill. In colloquial terms, I would say that we have thrown the kitchen sink at it. We have done that in three ways: investment; modernisation and efficiency; and reform. Let me take each in turn. First, we have taken the choice that the Conservatives failed to take when they gutted our legal aid system, our court workforce and the capital spend in our courts. We have reversed that. Now, £2.78 billion has been agreed in the concordat with our courts, including those uncapped sitting days, and £287 million in capital spend is literally fixing the leaking roofs in Newcastle and right across the country. I was also pleased to see Harrow Crown court reopened when I visited the other day. On investment in our workforce, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle speaks of empty courtrooms. Of course we do not want to see empty courtrooms, but that is a reflection of the state of system capacity. We cannot 3D-print judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers or court staff; we have to train them. Those people are skilled. They have to be trained, they have to be remunerated, they have to be retained. That is why this Government chose, early doors, to make the investment of £116 million in criminal legal aid for solicitors, the £34 million pledged to advocates and the record settlement for the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as the investment in our judiciary. It is that that is going to fill and sustain our empty courtrooms. Many, including the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), have rightly spoken about victims. We have made a £0.5 billion investment in victim support services. The transformation in the availability of transcripts and audio recording of proceedings in our magistrates courts is vital not only to improving the victim experience but, given the intolerable delays, to keeping victims and witnesses engaged in the process, because when victims and witnesses pull out of the process and walk away, they do not get justice at all. That is the situation that the Conservatives left us with. Efficiency and modernisation are vital too, and it is right that Members across this House challenge the system and challenge those responsible for it to improve matters. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for referring to prisoner transport and the prisoner escort and custody services—PECS—because this issue has been highlighted by the Bar, by the judiciary and by Members in this House. The Minister for Prisons in the other place and I have set up an oversight board to grip our PECS contracts—contracts that were agreed with Serco by the previous Government—to ensure that we are driving out inefficiency in that operation from end to end. The judiciary is making a step change through a national listing framework, accompanied by AI data-driven tools, to improve the listing and scheduling of cases and make it more consistent. We are seeing investment in blitz courts in London and other places, as well as a case co-ordinator in every single Crown court centre to progress cases more rapidly. The adoption of remote technology is increasing the amount of remote participation, reducing the need for those prisoner transfers and enabling us to get through the easier cases. All of that is being done to drive the efficiency that everyone quite rightly wants to see. However, I have to be clear that—just as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick said, and consistent with the conclusions of Sir Brian Leveson—efficiency and investment alone will not reduce the backlog. It is true that the investment that we have made in sitting days, uncapping them for 2026-27, has resulted in a stabilisation of the backlog, just as we hoped it would, but the backlog continues to sit at over 80,000. Behind each and every one of those cases, there is a victim waiting for justice and a defendant stuck languishing in the remand system, and the public’s confidence in our criminal justice system is waning. That is why we will not duck the necessity of structural reform.

• 29 Jun 2026 · Home Office and Ministry of Justice · Hansard source

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  The policy exists, as I have said, critically in the context of a restored probation system, and it is to that which I come right now. Probation is an indispensable part of the scheme that the hon. Member talks about—a probation system that was, as I have said, absolutely gutted under the Opposition. Probation and community services will receive an additional £700 million by the final year of the spending review. In real terms, that looks like recruiting at least an additional 1,300 trainee probation officers by March 2027, on top of the over 2,300 who have been onboarded in the past two years. Those hard-working probation officers—not the slackers that perhaps were portrayed by the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox); far from it— doing some of the most difficult jobs in our public services have been delivered a 6% headline increase in pay, and rightly so, because they do such valuable work. They have been given the tools with which to do that work. We have the biggest expansion of tagging in British history, with a presumption that every offender will be tagged on release from prison, save in very specific circumstances. All of that keeps the public safe, and staff will be given the technology to enable them to do their work in a more efficient and accurate way with the Justice Transcribe AI-powered tool. These investments and reforms will ensure that probation officers can have the biggest impact by focusing on those who present the highest risk. A number of points have been made on legal aid, which will celebrate its 80th anniversary in a couple of years’ time. It is one of the proudest achievements of a previous Labour Government—the Attlee Government. It is something that we have put back on a stable footing. As I have said, we have put in an enormous uplift of £116 million for legal aid solicitors, up to £34 million for barristers, match funding for pupillages, building the workforce and, to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell), investment in the digital system. My hon. Friend is right that the particular line in the estimates pack from the House of Commons Library to which I believe she refers does not reflect the totality of the capital investment that the Government have made in this area. We are at £61 million invested in the digital transformation. That is much needed because those in this House will know that the impact that the criminal cyber-attack had on the legal aid system was so detrimental, precisely because there had been so much underinvestment and neglect of the system. It is therefore important that we not just stabilise the system, but transform it so that legal aid providers, but even more importantly, their clients can benefit in the long term. I am conscious of time, and so I will speak briefly about policing. The hon. Member for North Cotswolds is absolutely right that this is one system and it needs to behave as such. I recently had the privilege of visiting the Greater Manchester local criminal justice board, and I saw an outstanding example of cross-working in the criminal justice system. Prevention is better than cure, and so much of the investment we see in policing, but also the reform in the policing reform Bill, which will bring so many officers out from behind their desks and onto the streets in neighbourhood policing, will mean that we can prevent so much crime and intervene before so much of that behaviour becomes problematic.

• 29 Jun 2026 · Home Office and Ministry of Justice · Hansard source

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  Prison education is vital, and I have seen some fantastic examples of it, in particular on a recent visit to High Down. Prison education can take many forms, such as vocational training and education in a conventional sense. In some senses, the bigger question is how do we make our prisons safe? There is no point in having outstanding education—I agree with the hon. Member that it is important; I do not think we disagree on this—if drones are bringing drugs and contraband into prisons, as he pointed out, and if prisons are overcrowded. If that is the case, it is almost impossible to deliver and see the benefit of that education. The fact that this Government are prioritising, through a £40 million investment, a drone prevention programme, that we are building new prisons that are fit for people to live in and receive that education, is a choice that makes sense and that, as I said, prevents so much of the problem. Violence reduction units, the prison reform Bill, and the workforce plan that the Home Office has put forward are all part of the choice—I return to that theme—that the Government make, whether on policing, courts, prisons, or probation. We choose to fix the mess, and when we see a problem we make the choices required to fix it. Investment, modernisation and reform: the contrast between that and the choices that Opposition Members made when in government could not be starker. We must now give the plan a chance to work.

• 29 Jun 2026 · Home Office and Ministry of Justice · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member has had an entire urgent question in which to ventilate these issues, and I am here to debate the estimates and address some of the other points that have been raised. I do not duck the essential point that our early release scheme will apply to some of those guilty of the offences to which he refers, if safe to do so. If they have misbehaved in prison, they will not benefit from those provisions. The point is that this is not a free-for-all. They will be subject to tagging and control on the outside. That is why the investment in probation is critical.

• 29 Jun 2026 · Home Office and Ministry of Justice · Hansard source

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  I am talking about courts, but I will turn to sentencing and prisons in due course. However, I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Sentencing Act provisions, which will come into force in September and to which he refers, were made necessary by the Opposition’s failure to invest in prison places over many years. Over 14 years in government, they made their choice, and they added net 500 prison places. In the first two years, this Government have already delivered an additional 3,000 places, and the biggest prison building programme since the Victorians is set to deliver 14,000 additional prison places. Let me return to the Crown court backlog. Reform cannot be avoided. To bring the backlog down, it is vital we ensure that the right cases are heard in the right place. It cannot be right that defendants can insist on their right to a jury trial in cases that could be heard by magistrates under even the existing sentencing powers. That is not fair on victims, and it is not fair that those cases are in the same queue as other, more serious cases, which have to have a jury trial, but a timely one. We cannot duck those choices. The proposals to increase magistrates courts’ sentencing powers, remove the right to elect and create a Crown court bench division are sound. When a triable either-way case is heard in the magistrates court, it moves far faster than in the Crown court. We have to take a proportionate and hard-headed approach that balances the rights of defendants, the rights of victims and the entitlement of every citizen in this country to a timely trial. Timeliness is an essential ingredient of fairness. As I have said, we inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse. To govern is to choose, and we took decisive action: £4.7 billion invested in the largest prison building programme that this country has seen, more foreign national offenders deported than ever before, 3,000 prison places delivered in the first two years of this Government and the Sentencing Act reforms, which will put our prisons on a more sustainable footing. As others have mentioned, we have also made a vital £700 million investment in probation, which is crucial to keeping the public safe and, as others have said, getting reoffending under control. Punishment can take place in prison, but punishment can also take place outside prison. The tough community sentence regime, the presumption of tagging, and the managed, structured and orderly early release system, as compared with the chaotic and opaque system under the previous Government—that is the choice that we make. That is how we get our criminal justice system under control.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Chichester for tabling new clauses 3 and 4, which seek to extend Crown court sitting hours, including the possibility of running two separate sessions per day, and enabling multiple cases to be heard in a single courtroom each day. In the same vein, amendments 59, 35 and 36, tabled by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, also call for a consultation on extending sitting hours in the Crown court, funding for 130,000 sitting days and a consultation on increased sitting days. As colleagues know, the Government have funded Crown court sitting days to record levels, and we are funding unlimited sitting days in the new financial year. That means that there is no financial constraint on the hours that Crown courts can sit. They can sit for as many days as possible within capacity constraints. That offers complete flexibility in Crown court centres to hear as many cases as possible. That represents real progress, and has been welcomed by Members on both sides of the House, the Bar and judges. But we cannot immediately increase capacity to 130,000 sitting days. That is not just a question of funding. Court capacity is not just about the rooms; it depends on judges, barristers, solicitors and court staff. We cannot 3D print those. We predict that sitting at unlimited levels next year will allow us to sit for 117,000 or 118,000 days, but we are not yet ready to ratchet up to 130,000 sitting days. That is the figure referred to in Sir Brian Leveson’s review, but he acknowledged that, even in the medium term, we will not get there. I say that because, although it is part of the Government’s ambition to grow capacity in the Crown court to meet the incoming demand and put the system on a sustainable level, the fact that we will not get there, even in the medium term, means that all those impacted by the cases sitting in the backlog—defendants on remand and potential victims—are left waiting. The lifting of the cap on sitting days is highly significant and is part of the investment lever that we all agree is needed to get our Crown court back on its feet. However, the central insight of the independent review of criminal courts is that that investment alone will not be enough, because even when we remove the limit on sitting days we cannot get to 130,000 sitting days because of capacity constraints. Extending hours alone does not increase the underlying capacity. Extending sitting hours or attempting to run multiple trials per day risks, I would argue, reducing time for case preparation, potentially increasing ineffective and cracked trials, and then potentially worsening delays rather than improving them.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Once again, I strongly reject that suggestion. The two things are not mutually exclusive: wanting to bring in measures that speed up justice for every victim in the criminal justice system and building the foundations for a specialist court. Let us get back to basics. What is a specialist court? What are we talking about? I have discussed this with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North. A specialist court prioritises a type of offence to address the timeliness issue. It guarantees special measures. Again, we have debated provisions in Committee about how we ensure the consistent guarantee of special measures in whichever Crown court in the country a rape trial occurs. Thirdly, it is a court in which not just those who are adjudicating and directing juries, but those who are supporting the participants, are trauma-informed, as that is how we now in contemporary society understand that evidence needs to be treated. That training is in train. Those are the essential ingredients of a specialist court. Those are the building blocks. We guarantee them not just in this Bill but through the funding of training and the measures being implemented in our courts. That is really important, but it does not have a bearing on the overall backlog problem. It prioritises those cases, as we recognise them being among the most serious with some of the most acute trauma, but it does not deal with the huge backlog delays for other forms of violent crime and other types of crime.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am going to make some progress. As I said, and as I discussed with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North, I assure the Committee that the principle behind this proposal is recognised by the Government. I agree with my hon. Friend on her assessment of what is needed: swifter justice and prioritisation so that victims do not wait years for their day in court; specialist staff and judges who are trained in these kinds of cases; and properly equipped courtrooms that support victims and witnesses to deliver their best evidence with dignity.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Well, during covid courts did operate with extended and flexible arrangements, but those were temporary measures, under exceptional conditions, dealing with reduced volumes. By the way, to the point made by the hon. Member for Chichester, the reduction in the hearing time in a sitting day—now under four hours—concerns me greatly. That loss of time aggregated over the 117,000-odd sitting days adds up and is hugely significant. But where HMCTS conducted pilots of increased and flexible sitting hours, it found that increasing hours alone delivered limited gains. There was also, at the time, substantial opposition from the Bar, because although we are primarily concerned with the hearing time, because that is where progress is driven in a trial, all the case preparation—whether that is judicial, reading the papers, or the preparation time that is needed by the barristers and the prosecution—needs to be factored in. Extending sitting hours sounds like a good remedy to this problem, but we do not think it provides a solution, because time needs to be afforded to enable proper case preparation, so that when we do get on with a trial we can crack on with a hearing.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not think it is necessary. Everyone has heard what I have to say.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady asks a really good question. The point about ineffective trials is one of the greatest sources of both delay and waste in the system. She is right that last year over 1,000 trials were ineffective on the date of trial. That means that everyone had turned up except for one element, and the hon. Lady cited a number of the missing elements. That is why I do not take issue with the data presented by the Institute for Government, but I do take issue with its remedy. As the IFG itself points out, one of the greatest drivers of those ineffective trials is workforce pressures—the fact that we do not have enough prosecutors and defence barristers. We are constantly being hit with the criticism that there are courtrooms lying empty. That slightly misrepresents the problem—sometimes we need that spare capacity in a court—but it is not entirely untrue. Part of that is about not just sitting days but system capacity and workforce. Building that workforce back up will take time. That is why the Government’s investment in criminal legal aid and match funding for pupillages is crucial, as is the record settlement that the CPS received. Building up the workforce to meet the demand and reduce the number of ineffective trials is so important. The hon. Member for Chichester made an important point about the interaction between the measures we are discussing, the desirability of reducing the number of floating trials because of the impact of late adjournments, and the need for some agility and flexibility, which is why listing is a judicial function in individual Crown courts. Some parties might be ready to go, and they will want to get the trial on sooner, so we want to allow for some flexibility to enable that. It is not about watering down all the special measures that might be needed to support best evidence, but about where it is desirable to have some agility. In that vein, the Government’s piloting of an AI, data-driven listing tool, which has been tested in Preston and Isleworth and is showing early positive results, will be crucial. I have seen the tool, and it allows us, based on certain factors in a case, to get a pretty rich understanding of how long it is likely to last. It works in much the same way as an NHS appointment: if somebody cancels because they are not well enough to go ahead with a surgery, but everybody else is ready—including the team, the doctors and the hip surgeon—can they pull in someone else on the waiting list? The tool will allow us to do the same kind of thing, building on some of the know-how from NHS appointment systems. We want to retain some agility while, at the same time, having a consistent approach to prioritising cases. We want to see rape cases prioritised in the national listing model, because of the vulnerability of the witnesses involved and how pernicious delays can be, and we want to drive out floating trials, but there has to be some flexibility in the system. One thing we must guard against—this is why we have to think really carefully about when legislation is needed and when it is not—is creating a situation where the intent might be absolutely right, but we inadvertently create inflexibility by legislating. In this case, we should not legislate in this way out of respect for the separation of powers and the constitutional dividing line between the executive and the judiciary, but there are other reasons why we might not want to legislate—for example, if it would lead to inflexibility and counterproductive results that go against the interests of some complainants in rape trials. That was a slightly long-winded answer, but I hope it gives the Committee a sense of how much is going on in the justice firmament that is not legislative but represents real progress for citizens in this country who have the misfortune of encountering the criminal justice system. New clause 23 would require the Lord Chancellor to undertake a review of how the reforms impact the way RASSO cases are handled. It is not right for victims to continue to pay for the crisis in our courts, particularly in respect of delays. We know that victims of rape are facing, on average, a wait of over 400 days for trial, and we know that a large proportion of the outstanding caseload—around 20%—is made up of sexual offences. We need to drive down that backlog, why is why I have said that reform measures are needed. There is no doubt that, if these reforms receive Royal Assent, the Ministry of Justice, the Justice Committee and others will look to measure the impact they are having. I urge the hon. Member for Chichester not to press new clause 23 to a vote. In a similar vein, new clause 25 seeks to introduce specialist courts, which I have already spoken about. I hope I could not have been clearer that the Government remain committed to this enterprise and to our manifesto commitment. However, the introduction of such courts does not require primary legislation. In essence, we are getting on with it, regardless. One thing I have already mentioned is providing trauma-informed training to all court staff, which will be available from this spring. Again, there is change happening right now in our courts, irrespective of what happens with the Bill. That is happening as we speak, and it will be a real step change. It is something for which victims groups have been calling for a very long term, and which I hope and believe will improve the experience of going to court for victims of sexual offences. I sincerely thank all Members who have tabled new clauses in this space. It is important—and, frankly, a welcome opportunity—for me, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), and others to talk about how we are galvanising these different initiatives within our criminal justice system. We want to deliver the specialist courts that we promised, to drive forward progress and to encourage our judiciary to be front-footed and progressive in its listing practices, but this is not mutually exclusive with the reforms in the Bill designed to drive down the backlog; it is a question of both/and, not either/or. I thank hon. Members for raising these important issues, but I urge them not to press their new clauses to a vote.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  As I have said, we have precedent. The pilots showed that there was precious little improvement. Extending sitting hours might make things worse if, for example, one is stuck in extended hours on one trial, meaning that one is not available to be in other parts of the country.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We heard evidence from Sir Brian Leveson about how in his earlier years sitting in the Crown court it was not unusual to hear a couple of trials in a day. One of his insights was that part of the changing nature of what we are grappling with here is that Crown court trials are just taking longer. That ability to hear multiple trials within the court day has been impeded by the fact that trials are taking longer because of the nature of the evidence and the procedural safeguards. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about multiple trials. It important to note that the Lord Chancellor has a power under section 78(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 to determine when the Crown court sits. The amendment is not necessary with regard to needing to change primary legislation in order to change sitting hours.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  A juryless system?

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden for speaking to the new clause. As she knows, an early guilty plea avoids the need for a trial, shortens the gap between charge and sentence and, crucially, can save victims and witnesses from the concern of having to give evidence. Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts found that “guilty pleas are being entered later and later” in the process. It found that “in 2016, approximately 25% of defendants who pleaded guilty to all counts prior to trial did so at or after their third pre-trial hearing”, compared with 35% in 2024. That reflects the decline in the efficiency and the increase in delays in the criminal courts. Sir Brian made it clear that that was contributing to the backlog and, in turn, creating a “feedback loop” of perverse incentives for defendants. There are, then, clearly benefits to ensuring that those who intend to plead guilty do so at the earliest possible opportunity. For those reasons, it has long been the practice of the criminal courts to give a reduction in sentence when an offender pleads guilty earlier in the process. The level of sentence reduction that the court can give on a guilty plea is currently set out in sentencing guidelines produced by the Sentencing Council. In his review, Sir Brian made a number of recommendations relating to early guilty pleas, including a recommendation to increase the maximum reduction in sentence for a guilty plea from 33% to 40%, which new clause 1 seeks to implement. However, we must maintain the right balance between the benefits to the system obtained by the making of early guilty pleas and ensuring that offenders are appropriately punished for their crimes. Sir Brian also notes that increasing the maximum sentencing discount for early guilty pleas could increase the “risk of pressure being brought to bear on defendants to plead guilty, who might not otherwise have done so.” It is therefore important that we consider whether there are alternative ways to encourage early guilty pleas, as opposed to increasing the level of maximum sentence discount. We are not convinced that a further discount will work to incentivise the behaviours that we desire in the system, not least because other matters play their part in incentivising an early guilty plea, or the opposite. They include the nature of the offence, whether a defendant is remanded or released on bail, and the level of early engagement by the prosecution and defence in advancing case progression. We consider all those things as alternative factors that drive defendant behaviour. Most importantly, the punishment must be appropriate to the offence in question, and we think the new clause would cut against that. We are currently carefully reviewing Sir Brian’s remaining recommendations, alongside part 2 of his review, and we will set out our full detailed response to that review in due course. For those reasons, I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden to withdraw the clause.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden for speaking to new clause 2, the hon. Member for Chichester for tabling new clauses 6 and 23, and the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle for tabling new clause 25. Before I turn to new clause 2, I will take a moment, as others have done, to acknowledge the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North, and to thank her for having the courage to share her experiences on this issue in the Chamber in order to drive forward change for victims of sexual violence. I think all of us remember the moment when she gave her speech in the Chamber—you could have heard a pin drop. That obviously took considerable personal courage. Hearing from her then, and subsequently when we have spoken about how she feels the system let her down, has been invaluable in shaping my thinking on the issue. New clause 2 has catalysed the debate about how our criminal justice system treats those who have experienced rape and serious sexual violence. The hon. Member for Wimbledon made a powerful speech about the Labour party manifesto. It contained a commitment, which we have been driving forward, to halve violence against women and girls. Let me be absolutely clear. Our manifesto commitment to introduce specialist courts for rape and sexual offences has never changed. It has not been watered down, and our commitment to it has not wavered. The Minister for Victims and I, as well as others across Government, have been putting in place the foundations to deliver those specialist courts. It is important to note that that change and the efforts to drive down the delays right across our criminal justice system are not mutually exclusive, because we need to deliver change for all victims of crime. Those two things are not an either/or. While it is true that the proposals, which build on the recommendations of the independent review of the criminal courts, are not in the Labour party manifesto, I also believe, as I have said before, that to govern is to choose. When we see a problem in any public service—when we see a backlog of over 80,000 cases, and cases being listed into 2030—we could say, “Well, we didn’t specify in our manifesto how we were going to fix it; we’ll just get on with everything that was in our manifesto and turn a blind eye.” I am not prepared to do that. I want to be absolutely clear with the Committee, and with Parliament in general, that the two things are not mutually exclusive. We can deliver both specialist courts for victims of rape and the necessary changes that I have contended for to drive down the backlogs and delays that are denying justice to defendants and victims right across our criminal justice system.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We are making those choices. The difference is that we do not need legislation to make those choices. We have made those choices, including the commitment of money to fund independent legal advisers, trauma-informed training and victim support. We have made those decisions. We have put those building blocks in place. We do not need legislation to deliver specialist courts. I had this discussion yesterday with the Victims’ Commissioner. We do not need legislation. I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of the new clause. How could I not? It is in our manifesto. We are taking action to deliver it. We do not need the new clause to deliver it—that is the point. I will come shortly to its unworkability, but I will not take from the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion or anyone else the suggestion that we have not been making the choices to deliver on our commitment to halve violence against women and girls.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I will make two points in response. First, the full extent of the crisis in our criminal justice system was not apparent. It was not apparent in prisons, when we opened the car bonnet on day one and essentially found prisons at breaking point. That obviously interacts with courts, because if we are sentencing people and there is simply nowhere to put violent criminals, we have a pretty serious problem on our hands. The full extent of the crisis in our courts was not apparent either, and we need to have a solution that meets the moment. That is what this Bill is. Secondly, I strongly refute the suggestion that we have been sitting on our hands; rather, we have been putting in place the building blocks and ingredients of a specialist court. We are rolling out trauma-informed training not just for our specialist judges but for every member of the court staff—that is in train. We are changing the way that evidence is dealt with, as we debated on clauses 8 to 11. We are investing £6 million in the introduction of independent legal advisers for victims of rape as they go through that process. We are committing more than £500 million to victim support, some of which will cover victims of rape and sexual offences. I would argue that that is far from change denied. I would call that change in train, which will deliver a transformation for victims of rape in this country.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not accept that the vast majority of the changes we are introducing are unprecedented; in the main, we are shifting caseload from the Crown court to the magistrates court, and we already have a way of testing that. Trials for either-way offences, some of which are already retained in the magistrates court, give us a direct comparison. People can elect the Crown court, and we can see that those retained in the magistrates court are dealt with more promptly. We also saw evidence from international comparators, as well as from experienced judges. We think these are the right measures, and not only to deal with the backlog; they also have a normative basis in striking the right balance between defendant’s rights and those of complainants and victims. We think that is right. I understand that the Opposition disagree, but we think, based on the expert review we were provided with, that this is the right package. We do not think there is a need for a pilot, nor is there a need for a sunset clause.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Let me begin, as we all have in this Committee, by acknowledging the challenges that victims face in accessing the information and support they need. We have talked about the Government’s drive to centre victims in the criminal justice process. I have a couple of things to say in response to new clause 7. First, there is lots of work under way. For example, on 5 February this year we launched a consultation on a new victims code to ensure that we get the foundations right for victims. Through the connecting criminal justice data programme, we are aiming to strengthen data sharing by seeing how we can both track and share that data with victims, as appropriate. We have published statutory guidance on independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers, recommending best practice for those roles. Of course, we have also begun to roll out the independent legal adviser service for rape victims. We have also undertaken consistent engagement; I met the Victims’ Commissioner just yesterday to discuss some of the ways in which we can marshal the over £500 billion-worth of investment that the Government have made in victims services, so that we can ensure that we have a victim-centred approach. Case management is ultimately a matter for the judiciary, but taking into account the impact that delays in processes have on victims will of course form an important part of that. I would say that a publication strategy is not a matter best addressed through primary legislation, but I understand the thrust behind the hon. Lady’s proposal, and it is one that we would agree with.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I commend clauses 21 to 27 to the Committee. I did not specifically mention the House staff and all our wonderful Chairs. I add my thanks to everybody for their hard work. I also thank my team of officials—those watching at home and those in the room—who have worked very hard. Question put and agreed to. Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clauses 22 to 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Bill, as amended, to be reported.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  We are not going to do a pilot, not because piloting is not a good idea per se, but because a pilot would necessitate legislation, which is why the hon. Lady has proposed it in this way, and because it would lead to a criminal justice system with different models running in parallel. That is okay—that happens with pilots and trying new things, I understand that—but fundamentally we are not piloting the changes to courts because of the extent of the crisis we are in. We need to bear down on the backlogs. We are satisfied that we have the evidence that the package of reforms will deliver significant time savings in the Crown court to achieve those efficiencies. We think we have struck the right balance between access to jury trial and speeding up the courts. For that reason, we maintain that we do not need to do a pilot here. We do not have anything against piloting per se, but in a world in which the demands on our criminal justice system are changing, we must keep up. We have thought long and hard, based on independent review. I would suggest that that is an evidence base.