Public Bill Committees

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: Dawn Butler, † Sir John Hayes, Dr Rupa Huq, Christine Jardine

† Berry, Siân (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)

† Bishop, Matt (Forest of Dean) (Lab)

† Brown Fuller, Jess (Chichester) (LD)

† Farnsworth, Linsey (Amber Valley) (Lab)

† Hack, Amanda (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)

† Hamilton, Paulette (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)

Kohler, Mr Paul (Wimbledon) (LD)

† McIntyre, Alex (Gloucester) (Lab)

† Morgan, Stephen (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty’s Treasury)

† Mullan, Dr Kieran (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)

† Osborne, Tristan (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)

† Paul, Rebecca (Reigate) (Con)

Qureshi, Yasmin (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)

† Robertson, Joe (Isle of Wight East) (Con)

† Sackman, Sarah (Minister for Courts and Legal Services)

† Slinger, John (Rugby) (Lab)

† Ward, Melanie (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)

Robert Cope, Dominic Stockbridge, Francis Morse, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Sir Brian Leveson, Author of the Independent Review of Criminal Courts

Claire Waxman OBE, Victims’ Commissioner

Professor Katrin Hohl, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, City St. George’s, University of London

Dame Vera Baird DBE KC, former Victims’ Commissioner

Farah Nazeer, CEO, Women’s Aid

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott

Charlotte Meijer

Morwenna Loughman

Public Bill Committee

Wednesday 25 March 2026

(Morning)

[Sir John Hayes in the Chair]

Courts and Tribunals Bill

Before we begin, I ask Members to switch electronic devices to silent. Tea, coffee, soft drinks and sandwiches are not allowed, although water is permitted. There are a couple of procedural things to do before we hear from our witnesses. We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper, and then consider a motion to enable the reporting and publication of written evidence to the Committee. There is also a motion to allow us to deliberate in private before the oral evidence session begins, to talk about how we are going to handle the session.

Ordered, That— (1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Wednesday 25 March) meet— (a) at 2.00 pm on Wednesday 25 March; (b) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 April; (c) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 April; (d) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 April; (e) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 April; (f) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 28 April; (2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:

Copies of written evidence the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room, which is very useful for the Opposition and for the Government, as I am sure you all know. I said to the Minister before we started that my view is that the Government’s job is to get legislation through and the Opposition’s job is to scrutinise it, and I will protect both in that pursuit. My job as Chairman is to help both sides to achieve those aims, and it is entirely possible to do so.

Resolved, That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Sarah Sackman.)

The Committee deliberated in private.

On resuming—

We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start, do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill? No. If any Member has an interest that is relevant to their question or speech, they should declare it at the appropriate time.

Examination of Witness Sir Brian Leveson gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Sir Brian Leveson. We must stick to the timings of the programme order that the Committee has agreed, so we have until 9.55 am for this panel. Will the witness please briefly introduce themselves for the record?

Sir Brian Leveson: My name is Brian Leveson. I was a practising criminal lawyer from 1970. I became a silk in 1986. I went on to the High Court bench in 2000, and the Court of Appeal in 2006. I was the senior presiding judge for England and Wales between 2007 and 2009, the inaugural chair of the Sentencing Council between 2010 and 2013, president of the Queen’s bench division from 2013, and latterly head of criminal justice. I retired at the compulsory age of 70 in 2019. I am now the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. I have spent the last 15 months seeking to review criminal justice, a subject which I rather thought I had left behind.

Q I am Kieran Mullan, the shadow Minister and MP for Bexhill and Battle. I want to take you back to the process of your appointment and ask whether, prior to your appointment, you had any discussions with Ministers or officials about your views on the right to elect and the use of jury trials.

Sir Brian Leveson: No, although I recognise that, in 2015, I looked at efficiency in criminal proceedings. Everybody says that was a wonderful time—no, it was not. I published a report that dealt with efficiency. It was not to incorporate anything that involved legislative change, but in chapter 10, “Out of Scope”, I discussed what Sir Robin Auld said in 2001. Anybody looking at that material would have seen that I was seriously concerned about the way in which criminal justice was proceeding and progressing, notwithstanding the backlog then because of an absence of police officers. What I visualised has actually come to pass.

Q I want to ask about the process of your review. Did you undertake any visits to Crown courts, and if so, which ones?

Sir Brian Leveson: Well, I have been visiting Crown courts for 50 years. I personally visited Liverpool Crown court, and I am sure I went to another Crown court, but my team went a large number of Crown courts. I was assisted by three advisers: Professor David Ormerod, who is I think the foremost criminal academic lawyer in the country; Chris Mayer, a former chief executive of HM Courts Service; and Shaun McNally, a former director of crime at HMCS and a former chief executive of the Legal Aid Agency. I had plenty of expertise. I did not need to visit courts; they did. I spoke to a lot of judges, though.

Q You mentioned that you visited Liverpool.

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes.

I do not want to assume what you may or may not know about Liverpool, but are you aware that Liverpool does not have a backlog in its courts?

Sir Brian Leveson: I am very aware of Liverpool: I am a Liverpudlian. I practised in Liverpool. I know all the judges in Liverpool extremely well. It would be a mistake to think that Liverpool is a microcosm of the country, for lots of reasons. Liverpool has a single Crown court. There are 20-odd courts in one building. It was opened in 1984—I was present. It has its problems, but it is still a very highly functioning court. There is one Crown Prosecution Service area. There is essentially one police force, although there is a second in Cheshire. There is one chief probation officer. Much more importantly, there is a small local Bar where everybody knows everybody else and they all get on with it. That is not the case in other parts of the country.

Q Are there any lessons that could be drawn out for the rest of the country? You have given us some that you think cannot be.

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes, and I have made recommendations. It is critical that the systems join up: the police, the CPS, the defence community, the courts, the judiciary, and the prison and probation services. They all have their own budgets, their own problems and their own priorities. One of the recommendations I made in part 2 of my review—which is not considered in the Bill, obviously—was the creation of a criminal justice adviser whose only responsibility was co ordinating the work of each of the agencies to try to make them work together. That is where it has worked in Liverpool. But doing that on its own would not be sufficient.

Q I want to move on to the references in your report to the modelling. I have various quotes from part 1 of your report, to refresh your memory of what you said. In paragraph 11, on page 34, you say: “I have no doubt that the MoJ will want and need to conduct more detailed modelling, including through impact assessments of any recommendations taken forward.”

It is a common theme throughout the report that you say, repeatedly, that you expect that the Ministry of Justice will want to undertake more detailed modelling than the modelling you undertook. Are you aware of what, if any, more detailed modelling the MOJ did undertake?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is not my responsibility. What I wanted to say about modelling was this: it is bordering on the speculative to think that you can model all the changes to get one set of results. I am very conscious, for example, of the modelling in relation to the time saved by a bench division. You will know, and doubtless quote it at me in a moment, that the modellers suggest 20%, which I believe is pessimistic. Let me say why I think that is so, because it is very important that the Committee understands this.

How can modelling be undertaken in relation to systems that have never operated? The first question is, “What time would be saved?” The modellers—the analysts—looked to the court service: “How many minutes would be saved by not having to do this with a jury? How many by doing that, and the other?” They also spoke to some judges. I believe they came up with a figure that is far too pessimistic, as I said.

Let me explain why. The dynamic of a criminal trial conducted with a jury is very different from the dynamic of a trial conducted without a jury. Take family work, for example. The judge gets involved. If there is a jury, he finds no facts—every fact that anybody wants to elicit or develop, unless it is inadmissible, they can—but if a judge is conducting a trial, he or she will say, “Well now, what’s the issue in this case? Let’s get down to it,” and, “I’ve got that point; what’s the next point?” That changes the dynamic of the trial entirely.

Indeed, I have spoken to district judges who try rapes in the youth court and are also sex ticketed recorders, so are trying rapes in the Crown court, and they say to me that trials in the Crown court are twice as long as for the same sort of acquaintance type rape in the youth court. Canadian judges talk about 50%; I am concerned to achieve fair justice, and I need to speed that up because of the backlog.

Q I will take you through some further questions.

Sir Brian Leveson: Fine.

On the right to elect, your report—we are not talking about further work that you are not responsible for—says: “It has been assumed that disposals per day in the magistrates’ court are in line with the current average.”

So if we change the system, disposals will remain at the current rate. If we are trying more complex, more serious cases, is it reasonable to assume that the disposal time will be the same as for those currently seen for less serious cases?

Sir Brian Leveson: Why do you say they are more complex? They are not necessarily more complex at all.

If they are being given sentences of potentially up three years versus, for example, six months, you do not think that will have any impact on the time, complexity or seriousness of the cases?

Sir Brian Leveson: I am not suggesting it will not have any impact; I am suggesting that the time cases take is not necessarily governed by the nature of the charge or, indeed, the eventual sentence. In the 1970s, I could conduct two trials in a day; nobody ever conducts a trial in a day these days.

Q I am being pressed for time, so I have just one final question.

Sir Brian Leveson: Keep going.

The most specific element of modelling that the MOJ undertook was something called a structured elicitation workshop, which found that the time saved would be between 10% and 30%. At the lower the end, that is half of the 20% estimate that you put forward. Would you accept that?

Sir Brian Leveson: No. I think that is wrong. As far as I am concerned, there will be a considerable time saving and, much more importantly, there will be a cultural shift. At the moment, if you can put your trial off until 2028, what is not to like?

Q Okay, so it would be fair to say that your report points to the need to do further modelling, the MOJ has undertaken that modelling, and you reject the modelling that your report says the MOJ needs to undertake to better understand the impact.

Sir Brian Leveson: I do not accept that characterisation at all. I believe that savings in a Crown court will be dramatic, for cultural and involvement reasons, in the same way that family judges get through cases more quickly. If you ask those who are opposed to any change what they think will happen as a result of change, they are going to be—

Sorry, but to correct the record: those people were not opposed. There was an MOJ orchestrated workshop of neutral parties and judges, and they said it would be 10% to 30%. That is massively different to your estimate.

Sir Brian Leveson: Judges?

Yes. A whole series of stakeholders were invited by the MOJ and they potentially strongly disagree with your central conclusion of 20%. I have no further questions.

Q Sir Brian, I would be grateful if you would elaborate for the Committee on the point you made about cultural change. Your view, expressed in the report, is that you think that a judge only or Crown court bench division would save 20% at least—at a conservative estimate. You refer to a cultural change; can you elaborate and explain what you mean by that?

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes. At the moment, there are undeniably defendants who are gaming the system. They are charged with a crime, they are told their trial will not be until 2028 or 2029, and they are happy to put it off.

I gave an example in a debate on this subject. I said that in 1970 I would say to defendants in around November, “Well, this is a very strong case. If you are guilty, you are much better admitting it. You get a discount for pleading guilty and you can explain it, which will contain litigation.” More than once defendants would say, “Well, Mr Leveson, I am guilty, and I will plead guilty, but I want to spend Christmas with my kids, so I will plead guilty in January.” Now they can say, “I would like to spend Christmas 2028 with my children.” That was an anecdote from me, but after the debate a defence solicitor from London came up to me and said, “That example you gave—I am having that conversation every day of the week.”

We need people to confront what they have done. I do not want anybody to plead guilty who is not guilty and has seen the evidence. I am not asking to change the guilty plea rate, but in the early days, you pleaded guilty on the first or the second occasion you appeared at the Crown court—now there are many examples of that happening on the fifth or the sixth occasion you are in the Crown court. Each one of those takes a considerable amount of time. That is what is sucking up part of the time.

There are lots of other challenges to the system, which if you have had what I do not say is the benefit or privilege of reading both parts 1 and 2 of my review, you will see that I try to elaborate on there. I am concerned that we need to change the dynamic so that people address allegations that are made against them at the first opportunity, rather than hoping that the victim will withdraw, the witnesses will forget or the case will just fade away. That is the point I am talking about with cultural change.

Q You made the point across both parts of your comprehensive review that what is needed to address the crisis in the system is a holistic package of reforms, rather than a pick and mix of reforms. Do you believe that we can turn the tide on the backlog without structural reform?

Sir Brian Leveson: No, I do not. I have spent my life trying to improve the efficiency of criminal courts, from the time that I was senior presiding judge in 2007. I have spent a lot of time trying to improve efficiency. It has deteriorated for all sorts of reasons, which I elaborate on in my review. It will be difficult to get that moving. It can be done. The money going into the system has been dramatically reduced over the years. The MOJ was not a protected Department, and has really suffered as a consequence. Do I believe that money and efficiency will do it? No, I do not, because that will not change the cultural dynamic.

Q The Government are seeking to take forward your proposal, in the independent review of the criminal courts, on the introduction of a permission test for appeals from the magistrates courts, rather than what is currently the case, which is an automatic right of appeal. What was the rationale behind your recommendation? Why do you see it as both a proportionate and a fair response to the current need for reform?

Sir Brian Leveson: The reason why I started to think about that was that I have long been of the view that it would be valuable, as technology has improved, to record magistrates court proceedings—in other words, to have a record of what is said in the magistrates courts. Once one is doing that, there is no reason why one should not introduce the same sort of approach to appeals as the one used in the Crown court and the Court of Appeal criminal division.

I was particularly impressed—I use the word impressed, but I was concerned—by an argument that I heard that many minor sexual assaults that were dealt with in the magistrates courts or the youth courts, which could include rape, almost automatically went to appeal to the Crown court, on the basis that the victim would not turn up the second time and be prepared to go through the whole process again. That is a serious problem. To require victims to go through the experience of giving evidence and being cross examined twice is unfair on them. Everybody needs to be able to move on with their lives, and that is victims and defendants as well.

Although I have talked about defendants gaming the system, I do not ignore defendants who are determined to pursue a not guilty plea because they do not feel they have done anything wrong, but whose lives are on hold for years until their trials happen. I had an example of a young man who was at university and charged with rape. His university career is long since gone, and he could not get a job because he had to tell potential employers, “I’m due to be tried for rape.” The system has to change. That is what I believe, but of course it is for you to decide whether it does.

Q Hello, Sir Brian. My name is Jess Brown Fuller. I am the MP for Chichester and the justice spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. I will rattle through a couple of questions so that other Members get a chance to ask theirs. As part of your review, did you look at the concept of rape and serious sexual offences courts? If you did, why did they not form a basis of your recommendations?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is easily answered: there are just too many of them. My view is that nobody should be a circuit judge unless they are capable of trying serious sexual crime—nobody. The empathy required to deal with victims is not just restricted to rape and serious sexual crimes. The make up of cases going to the Crown court has changed over the last 10 years, so what might have been a good idea 10 or 15 years ago when there were fewer such cases does not cut it now. There are just too many cases, and that is why I did not recommend a specialist rape court.

Q Do you believe that the two parts of the review were commissioned in the right order?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is an interesting question. I have long since believed that there needed to be radical change. The fact is that the backlog went up in the 12 months since I was appointed in December 2024—sorry, this will be a longish answer. You would have thought that everybody would be working like mad to demonstrate that efficiency could bring the backlog down over the year following my appointment. Not only did the backlog not go down, but it went up higher than the highest projection that the Ministry had.

I have always been of the view that efficiency alone would not do it, and you were going to have to look at legislative change. If you were going to look at legislative change, it was important that you all had the chance to consider that as soon as possible, so I was perfectly content to deal with policy first and efficiency afterwards, on the basis that by the time you got around to dealing with it, you would have both reports anyway and you could look at everything together; I hope you have.

I want to get three more people in, so pithy questions and pithy answers, please.

Sir Brian Leveson: I am sorry.

Q I serve on the Justice Committee and am a former Crown prosecutor, so I have an interest in the Crown prosecutions aspect of this.

On 17 March, we heard evidence on the Justice Committee from Tom Guest, the director of policy at the Crown Prosecution Service. He talked about the CPS being supportive of the structural reform that is proposed in the Bill. He said that we were “at a critical juncture” and that this is “a generational opportunity for end to end reform. Our view is that we have gone far beyond the point where piecemeal or non legislative solutions will suffice. They are definitely part of the solution, but they will not solve the problem. The status quo is failing victims, witnesses and defendants.”

Do you recognise that sentiment, and do you have any comments in relation to the view of the Crown Prosecution Service and its role to play in this structural reform?

Sir Brian Leveson: I do recognise the sentiment: it is exactly my own. I think the CPS has an enormous role to play. You will know from the report that I wrote that there are lots of areas in which improvement and co ordination of activity is critical. IT changes have to made: there are 43 forces with 43 different IT systems, each of which the CPS have to negotiate with. Redaction is an enormous problem, as is file build. The relationship between the police and the CPS, and the inability of police defence lawyers to speak to CPS lawyers—all that needs to change, and that is why I suggested the adviser.

Neither the question nor the answer were pithy enough.

Q Why was it possible to get through two trials a day in the ’70s, but it is not now?

Sir Brian Leveson: There are lots of reasons.

But jury trials are not the principal reason.

Sir Brian Leveson: No, no, I do not and have never blamed jury trials at all. The reason is that the complexity has changed. Pace, disclosure of unused material, special measures, bad character, hearsay and data—cell site data, which is now critical to almost every single prosecution, and data taken from phones—have all added to the complexity and length of trials. I am not criticising juries at all, and I welcome jury trials, but the threshold must now be adjusted if we are to get justice for everybody in good time.

That brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions during this panel. Thank you very much for coming to give evidence, Sir Brian. We would have liked to have longer with you, but we have many witnesses to question. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you for coming and for giving evidence.

Sir Brian Leveson: You are very welcome, Sir John. If I can help in any other way, I will. I am happy to meet parliamentarians: I have offered to meet the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, and I am happy to meet anybody to talk about this on a cross party basis.

There we go: that is a very generous offer. For hon. Members who signalled that they wanted to ask questions, my apologies, but from what Sir Brian just said, he will make himself available to meet you at will.

Sir Brian Leveson: I do not know about “at will”.

Thank you very much, Sir Brian.

Examination of Witnesses Claire Waxman, Professor Katrin Hohl and Dame Vera Baird gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Claire Waxman, Professor Katrin Hohl and Dame Vera Baird. It is good to see you and to have you back here, Vera, albeit in a different guise.

I will follow the same procedure as I did in the previous panel, but I want to get more Committee members in, as I know that Members on both sides of the Committee missed out. I ask Dr Mullan and the Minister to try to keep the Front Bench questions tighter, so that we can get more participation from all parts of the Committee.

Q I think the witnesses were in the Public Gallery for the introductions, so I will skip straight to my questions. Claire, you have expressed your support of the structural reforms, including the reduction in access to jury trials. Could you take me through your policy formulation process when making such a decision to support a particular policy point?

Claire Waxman: Of course. My role is very much focused on listening directly to victim survivors and families bereaved by homicide, so any changes in legislation and proposals are sense checked with them. I have been listening to victims since 2020, when the pandemic hit, and have seen the direct impact of the long delays, with cases now going well into 2030. There is a human cost to that. We often say, “Justice delayed is justice denied,” but justice is not abstract for victims. When we delay justice, what it really means for victims is a lack of security and safety, and an inability to process what has happened, to get closure and to move on with their lives; all those are denied. We trap victims in prolonged years of uncertainty, which compounds and prolongs their trauma. I have spoken at length publicly about what that looks like for victims.

You will hear from victims shortly, and a letter signed by 18 victims who have actually been in the criminal justice system and sustained long waits for justice was sent last week. I have spoken to victims, and they want this to end: they want a way out, and they are desperate. They are saying that if having a judge only trial in a case will mean that they will come out of the system more quickly, they want to see timely justice. Without that, we are seeing a reduction in access to justice, an increase in victim attrition—and not just post charge, as we have seen an increase of more than 5% in the last five years—and a third of trials breaking down because victims have withdrawn as they cannot sustain staying in the system.

We are also seeing it impact the pre charge phase. Last year, as London’s Victims’ Commissioner, I published the London victim attrition review, finding that on average 40% of victims withdraw from the system, and that delays are playing a part in that—not just delays in investigation, but the thought of having to wait years to get into court.

Q So you feel you are reflecting what victims want.

Claire Waxman: Yes.

Q Are you familiar with the letter to the Deputy Prime Minister from a coalition of more than a dozen violence against women and girls groups, including the End Violence Against Women Coalition, London Black Women’s Project, the Centre For Women’s Justice and Welsh Women’s Aid, who oppose the changes to jury trials?

Claire Waxman: Yes, I am absolutely aware of it.

Q My next, very simple question is: do you accept that there is a diversity of opinion among those representing victims about whether it is the right step to take?

Claire Waxman: That letter was actually around victims who have been criminalised, so it is a different issue; they are dealing with victims who are defendants in the system, not victims who are complainants.

Welsh Women’s Aid?

Claire Waxman: Yes, they are talking about criminalisation, which is an appalling failing of our criminal justice system.

Q Sorry—we have to be really tight—you think Welsh Women’s Aid does not necessarily speak for victims?

Claire Waxman: In that letter, the focus is on the criminalisation of victims, which is awful. The overlap of criminalisation and victimisation needs to be dealt with way earlier on in the system.

Q Sorry, we have to be really tight with the questions. Do you think, if I were to ask Welsh Women’s Aid, they would say, “We support the changes to jury trials”?

Claire Waxman: In that letter, they are saying they are not—[Interruption.]

Kieran, can we just ask a question and get the answer?

Claire Waxman: You would need to ask Welsh Women’s Aid. They have signed up to a slightly different tone of a letter, which is around the criminalisation of victims coming into the system as defendants. It is very different to the victims I listen to—

Q You have made that point.

Claire Waxman: Victims are complex—

Sorry, but you have made that point. I am asking you a very specific question. Do you think Welsh Women’s Aid supports the change to jury trials?

Claire Waxman: We know they do not, because they have signed that letter—

They do not—thank you. That is fine. I have finished.

Claire Waxman But that is at odds with a number of the victims I speak to, just to be clear.

Q My first question is for Professor Katrin Hohl. There are measures in the Bill that address the admissibility of evidence in RASSO cases. How will those measures ameliorate the position for victims of those sorts of crimes?

Professor Hohl: The measures in the Bill that address sexual offences broadly fall into two groups. The first group clarifies and tightens admissibility rules around sexual history evidence and previous reports of sexual violence that may be portrayed as so called “victim bad character”, tightening that threshold to better protect victims from unnecessary, intrusive and unfounded lines of questioning. We very much welcome those.

There is also a set around special measures, which effectively clarify how they should apply. Those are also very welcome, and my understanding is that they are largely uncontroversial; they seem to be welcomed across the board.

Q Claire Waxman, you have been asked repeatedly about this letter. We have a witness from Women’s Aid coming later who will no doubt talk to the same issue, but you were not given a chance to elaborate on the distinction between the sorts of groups that signed that letter and the sorts of victims you speak to regularly, so I wanted to give you the opportunity to do so.

Claire Waxman: Thank you. First of all, victims are not a homogeneous group, and they do not always agree on everything, but the majority of victims, who are so desperate to get out of these long waits, are looking to you—to Government and to parliamentarians—to provide that reassurance that hope is on the horizon. As Sir Brian laid out this morning, and in all his analysis work, we need some structural reform in order to take the pressure off the overburdened court system. That is what we need to be looking at to alleviate what victims have to experience.

That sector letter is talking about a really serious failing of our criminal justice system, but it is about the criminalisation of victims. They should not even be coming into court. We need to be dealing with that way earlier in the process. We need to be looking at diversion, better identification of victims and pushing them into trauma informed responses and support.

I do not want to see victims coming into the system as defendants, but we cannot ignore the many victims I speak to—and there are victims who will speak to you directly today—who are in as complainants rather than as defendants. They are waiting years to give evidence. We know that when they wait years, there is a chance that they will withdraw; if they do not, the wait impacts the quality of their evidence. The impact of delays on memory will understandably affect their evidence. Inconsistencies naturally arise and that becomes very challenging for victims giving evidence years after the offence.

Thank you.

Q Thank you to the panel for coming. Sorry to use your words, Claire, but I am going to quote from the letter that you sent to the Prime Minister. You said that victims “also stress important safeguards: tackling the lack of diversity on the bench, and ensuring judges are robustly trained in the dynamics of abuse and trauma.”

You know that over many years many different parliamentarians have tried to legislate to ensure that everyone in the judiciary has mandatory training on those important safeguards. You also know that we are always told that, because the judiciary is independent, we cannot legislate to mandate that training. What would you like to see in the Bill to ensure the important safeguards that victims have reflected to you?

Claire Waxman: I have made that point for years, regardless of these reforms. We have to improve and get reassurance around judicial training, including training on cultural competency, on understanding bias and prejudice and on the dynamics of abuse. We still see issues around coercive control, post separation abuse and stalking. I need to be reassured that judges are being trained to the level that will give assurances to victims and to myself that they understand what is coming in front of them. We need reassurance from Government on that. I would suggest more investment in judicial training. We saw, over years—Vera will remember more than me when it happened—that the training on rape went down from three days to two days for judges. That was meant to be a temporary measure; I do not think it has gone back up. We need to make sure that we have good, robust training for judiciary and magistrates.

Q Thank you. How do the victims that you speak to and represent feel about the fact that these legislative reforms will not necessarily move the dial until potentially 2035, when we could see the backlog down to pre covid levels?

Claire Waxman: People in the criminal justice system need to move ahead with the efficiency measures. We need to move ahead with that so that we can start to see some of the adjournments not happening, better listing and so on. Of course, it is a desperate state. Just yesterday I spoke to a male victim of child sex abuse. He has been in the system since 2021 and in the court system for two years. He thought that he was giving evidence in the coming weeks. That has been adjourned and he has been asked his availability for 2027, 2028 and 2029. He is going to withdraw. I think Sir Brian said it—looking at structural reform came first because we know that the efficiency measures are not going to bring the backlog down quickly enough. We need to do everything together as a package of measures and we need to move ahead.

Good morning, all. I welcome your work and the support that you offer victims—all of you, in what you have been doing. I am sure there is cross party support for that in the room this morning. Do you think the changes in the Bill will improve the confidence of victims that, when they report crimes, they will receive justice more swiftly than they currently do and, more importantly, that the changes will also encourage more brave victims to come forward and report crimes?

Claire Waxman: There are a lot of good measures in the Bill that, if delivered and implemented well and with important safeguards, should have positive impacts for victims. We are removing appropriate cases from the Crown court, easing the burden there, and limiting the right to elect for a Crown court trial. By the way, victims view that right as an injustice. They feel that power and control is being given to the defendant, knowing full well that there is a chance they will come out of the process or that their evidence will be impacted over the years. That is something that victims regularly talk to me about. The measures around the automatic right to appeal and to make the magistrates a court of record will open up transparency in the courts and hopefully stop victims having to be called back in for a rehearing. That has devastating impacts; you cannot overestimate what it does to a victim when they think that they have gone through the process of giving evidence, and then they have to come in again.

If all those things ease the pressure and burden on the Crown court, that will give reassurance and confidence to victims who are thinking about whether to stay in the process currently. The measures Katrin talked about—putting in important safeguards around the cross examination of rape victims—are so important. Vera and I have worked on this since 2019, because of section 41, past sexual history, and issues around cross examination and compensation claims. That is a financial motive used to undermine the credibility of victims. Victims come out of the system and often say, “I will never report again,” but they tell their friends and families about their experiences, and that deters people and erodes public trust and confidence.

Q Thank you for your time, Claire. If I am interpreting your answer correctly, your basis for supporting the removal of jury trials is that it will save time and allow victims to get justice quicker. Would your position change if that is not the case and those time savings do not come through?

Claire Waxman: That is impossible to answer. We need to see it happen. You need to come back to me and say if it is not going to reduce—

Q Your letter says that this will result in quicker justice for victims, and that is why you support it. My question is: if that is not the case, would you not support it?

Claire Waxman: It is the case. The Crown court is overburdened. You have heard Sir Brian Leveson’s analysis; it cannot continue in the state it is in. If we do not take appropriate cases out of the Crown court, then what is the answer?

Q That suggests to me that if it did not save time, you would not support the proposal.

Claire Waxman: But I cannot imagine it. If you are taking cases out of the Crown court that cannot deal with the pressure, that will save time.

That is what we will be analysing over the next few weeks—whether it will or not.

We will limit ourselves to one question each at this stage so that everyone can get in. If there is more time, I will call people again.

Q Good morning, all. I want to ask a quick question to the former Victims’ Commissioner. Vera, based on your many years of experience as Victims’ Commissioner and working alongside the justice system, do you think structural reform is needed at this stage?

Dame Vera Baird: It is absolutely imperative. There is no way of stopping the problems that my colleague Claire has so well expressed without stopping smaller cases going into the jury list. The state has not said that they need to be tried by jury. As you know, the state says all summary offences go to the magistrates court, as do all indictable offences where it is imperative to have a jury trial—they are very important; the public needs transparency. That is what has been fixed.

It is the cases in the middle, which are at a relatively lower level of crime, where there is a right that the guy charged with rape or murder does not have to pick where he is tried. There is a right to do that for relatively small cases, which is exercised sometimes —you have heard from Sir Brian—in a very self interested way, which doesn’t surprise you, does it, really? If you can put the case off for three years, the witnesses might never come.

All of that is a problem, and it should be dealt with by bringing in a perfectly fair method of trial: a skilled judge, with or without two magistrates. Make no mistake about judges, there is a need to keep them well trained, of course there is. However, judges now do a lot of fact finding, not only in criminal cases. Look at the case of Charlotte Nichols, who waited 1,088 days to get to court. She told the most convincing story—what a woman; she is brilliant—to the House of Commons about what happened to her. After 1,088 days, the man was acquitted of raping her. She then had the resource to sue, and she sued in the civil court. A judge believed her and awarded compensation, which she felt was redeeming. There are many cases now where jury trials fail complainants and, if they have the resource, they go to the civil courts, and the judges there are more amenable.

We must not muddle jury trial and fair trial. In many cases—in Australia, all over New Zealand and in most of Canada—there is a right for a jury trial allocated defendant to opt out. More opt out of jury trials than remain in. Do you know why that is? It is because the acquittal rate is higher in judge alone trials universally. A judge reasoning a case cannot just say, “Well, I don’t really believe that Baird woman—I didn’t like the look of her. I’m not going to follow what she says,” as juries can. You have to sit down and reason out why it is so. Are you being rational or not? That will be a great asset to fair trial in the middle tier where Sir Brian is going to allocate the most serious of cases, which, frankly, the state has never said need to go to jury. It is about having a punt on a jury trial.

Thank you. You have explained that perfectly.

Q Victims say that they want to see greater diversity in the criminal justice system, and I agree with them. Which group of people is more diverse: juries, the British public or judges?

Dame Vera Baird: Is it your only point? The answer would be that judges are not as diverse as juries.

Q So do the changes in the Bill reduce diversity in the criminal justice system?

Dame Vera Baird: Not in the slightest. I assume you know that 73% of people who are entitled to a jury trial do not elect it and choose to stay in the magistrates court. That is men, women and black people. Black people and women disproportionately elect trial because they clearly feel that they will get a fairer trial with a diverse jury, but who says that is right? On the day, if you were a sex offender with some nasty allegations, for instance, you would have a better chance of acquittal in front of a judge than you ever would in front of a jury. It is just an opportunity to try to pick the best trial for yourself, but it is a punt in the dark. It is a go on the wheel of fortune. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it will not.

Q But we do agree that people with more diverse backgrounds elect jury trials and that option is being removed for them.

Dame Vera Baird: Seventy three per cent of people offered jury trials do not take the offer up. Are you sure that the term “elect” is correct? Is it not “demand”?

I am asking the questions.

Joe, I think three punts is enough. We have to move on.

Q To put the focus back on victims, Dame Vera explained clearly that it is the defendant who chooses. What would be the victim’s choice?

Dame Vera Baird: Is that not part of why this is very odd? We do not give a person alleged to have committed a very serious crime and whose life will be utterly transformed by what happens in the jury a right not to have a jury trial or to pick where he goes at all—and why would we?—but we do give that right to a small cohort of people on relatively small trials. Some of the trials are big, but the bigger ones will go into the judge court, not stay in the magistrates court. Why, when we have legislated for where these cases should be tried, do we allow that relatively small cohort to pick, in addition to the legislation the state has set out? The difference is between a magistrates court case coming in six months and a Crown court case coming in three or four years. That is the impact on the victim. For what?

As I have already said, the majority—73%—of people offered a jury trial do not take it up. There is no understanding anywhere—not at the Bar, I can tell you—that it is fairer than a judge alone or magistrates trial would be. Everybody at the Bar has had cases where they were absolutely shocked when a conviction happened because they never thought it possible and cases where they have got people off when they never thought it possible—of course, they are very chipper about that. Ask them when they come later. There is absolutely no hallmark anywhere that says jury trial is the only fair way.

Judges find facts in all kinds of cases outside the criminal courts. Of course, they also do so in trials; they have to decide, “Is there enough factual evidence here even for a case that a jury can answer?” They are a pretty good substitute for a jury—if that is how you want to look at it—to deliver fair trial.

Kieran has asked me to come back in, but please keep it tight.

Q I want to pick up on this discussion of the letter, which I think you characterised as coming from the perspective of women and girls as defendants in the system, not victims. I want to read you part of the letter: “The Government’s proposed reforms will likely create significant operational disruption and practical challenges that pull resources from more effective measures to reduce the backlog. This would prolong the uncertainty that leads many survivors to withdraw support for the prosecution of their abuser.”

Do you accept that the letter does, in fact, also talk about the impact on victims of the jury trial changes?

Claire Waxman: If you read the letter, it focuses on the victim coming in as a defendant, but it is also—

Q Sorry, I have just read you a direct quote about them as victims. Do you accept that it is in there?

Claire Waxman: You have to read the whole context of the letter—you have pulled out one bit. The whole context of that letter really focuses on listening to women who are wrongly being criminalised, as opposed to victims.

Q People will have heard the quote and they can make up their own minds.

Claire Waxman: I would urge you to read the letter that has been written and signed by 18 victims, instead of disregarding it—it is really important to read it.

Q I have read it, and I have just read you a quote. If you do not want to take a common quote at its face value, that is fine.

Claire Waxman: Can I just remind you that we have victims in the room, and I think that is really important?

Order. We cannot have a row going on.

Q Dame Vera, you talked about Charlotte’s powerful testimony. Would you accept that Charlotte has said it is wrong to use the voice of victims to advocate purely for reforms, as though all victims agree with them, and that she is opposed to the reforms?

Dame Vera Baird: Yes, but she is on her own—

Oh dear!

Dame Vera Baird: Kieran, you are not listening to what Claire says—she is right. The women’s movement is very disappointed with the Bill because it does not tackle the issue of criminalisation of women. They think that dealing with delays in the list is a very poor substitute, and they will not have it. They want to stand up at last for a proper defence of coercively controlled women who are put into crime—goodness knows it has been long enough coming—but that does not appear in the Bill. The women’s movement is very upset about that, and in my view that has driven this. I do not doubt—

Q I think it is very unfortunate for you to refer to Charlotte as being “on her own” in that way. It is very disrespectful.

Order.

Dame Vera Baird: No, it is not at all disrespectful. Natalie Fleet, who has also been abused, takes the opposite view. She does not want to be weaponised, Kieran, and that is a very sound point. None the less, her example is appalling, and nobody could doubt her. The man was acquitted, but a judge believed her, so what is your argument now? Judges are not fair.

Q Thank you for the amazing work you do for victims—it is a shame that respect is not being afforded across this room today. Victims are at the centre of this, and we should try to remember that in the debate.

To bring it back to victims—you referred to this, Claire—the Bill makes changes to the bad character evidence. Can you go into a bit more detail on what that is like from a victim’s perspective to have to go through a line of questioning about bad character evidence? Why is it so important that we are changing it?

Claire Waxman: These are important safeguards that need come in to better protect victims during the cross examination process. I have to say that most victims I speak to who have gone through the cross examination process—and this is not just rape victims—describe it as “brutal”. That is their word, not mine. They feel that it is often an experience to try to undermine their credibility at every point.

We have seen the use of past sexual behaviour or past sexual allegations to somehow undermine credibility. We have also seen it with compensation: as I said, it is a right under the victims code to be told about compensation, yet victims trying to access compensation is being weaponised and used as a way to undermine credibility. Many victims feel like they are the ones on trial, and they are being scrutinised. Putting in these important safeguards will help to improve that experience, so that they do not feel like they are under attack.

As I say, you are going to hear from victims shortly, one of whom has gone through that very experience, and I urge you all to listen to them. That is really important, because they are the ones with lived experience—they are living and breathing this delayed criminal justice system. Delays are not the only issue for victims; it is also about the treatment that they experience throughout the criminal justice system. Both need to be dealt with to really reduce victim attrition and improve victim satisfaction.

We are going to move on, because there are a lot of questions to get in.

Q I have a question of clarification for any member of the panel who wants to answer. In the letter received from the wider VAWG sector, the offences they are concerned that victims of coercive control or abuse might be charged with after striking back are triable either way offences and therefore affected by this Bill, but rape and sexual assault, as far as I understand it, are indictable only and will remain so. The impact on those more serious cases that have been discussed will therefore be due to the impact on the time to trial and on the efficiency of the courts, which we know will be uncertain and somewhat delayed. Is that your understanding? In some of the evidence we have heard, it sounded like the assumption is that rape trials will become judge only, but that is not what this Bill is about.

Dame Vera Baird: No, it is not. It has been, I am afraid, ramped up outside these rooms, with all these Churchillian speeches suggesting that jury trial is being taken away, full stop. That is completely untrue, as you rightly say.

Q But the victims’ groups who have written in because they are concerned about the criminalisation of women are talking about triable either way offences, which are directly affected by this Bill. Are their concerns there valid?

Professor Hohl: One thing to remember here is that over 90% of domestic abuse cases are already heard in the magistrates court. VAWG comprises not just sexual violence; it includes domestic abuse, sexual violence and sexual offences. There are some that will be in the either way category.

We have had a really emotive conversation this morning. One of the issues is judge alone versus jury trials, and there is a lot of emotion on either side. When we look back at the actual research, there is mention that judges may have biases, and a judge alone trial may disadvantage people. If that is the genuine concern, why are we happy to accept that for sentencing and admissibility? Why is it that in all the law we are making to guide admissibility of evidence, we trust a judge to separate between myth and stereotypes and facts, but not a jury? If we are genuine about it, we have to go a lot further around oversight and accountability in the judiciary. It would be odd to just worry about it on that specific issue.

I would also like the Committee to consider the evidence around juries. This is not to cast shade on juries but to pause and look at the research, which shows that juries, too, have biases, and there are worries about myths and misconceptions. The research on juries shows that these problems exist there, too. These issues exist with judges and juries. The remedy is not going to be either holding on to the status quo or not. The remedy will be something utterly outside of the discussion we are having that is about accountability and oversight.

Some of the measures in the Bill go that way—for example, recording creates transparency, and judges having to spell out the reasons for their verdict also goes towards that. The debate has moved a really long way away from what the research actually tells us, to quite an emotive batting to and fro. If there is space for the Committee to consider that wider evidence, I would recommend it is looked at.

Q Professor Hohl, do you think the Bill will lead to a fairer system, particularly for women?

Professor Hohl: This is an unanswerable question. What is fairness? [Interruption.] Well, it is an answerable question, but not a black and white one. We have heard this morning about a separation between the speediness of justice and the fairness of justice, as if they were two different things, when all the research shows that, for both defendants and victims, the time taken is part of justice. To artificially separate them does not work.

The way we measure the fairness of the system is about due process, not about outcomes. We cannot measure fairness through conviction and acquittal rates. The way our system is set up is about due process. Due process is not taking place when the system is on its knees, so getting the system to function better, so that due process can take place, should lead to a fairer system—provided that the Bill functions as intended.

Q May I ask for a clarification? Is Charlotte on her own in her views? Is she the only person who holds the views she has expressed?

Dame Vera Baird: Of course not, and I did not intend to say that. I have been trying to think, since we discussed it, about how I would feel if my experience were being used for a political cause, and it had been a very nasty experience. I might feel the same sort of—I do not know whether it is resentment or disappointment, or whether it is that it was inappropriate. I can well understand that, but many other victims do not agree that this will not help.

Women are waking up every morning, for three or four years, dreading the day when they will have to relive what happened to them in rape cases, or a man who has been very badly beaten up might wake every morning, worrying that he will have to relive it. It goes on and on like that, because there is a right to demand—as, I am afraid, I would phrase it—a trial for relatively small offences. I do not make little of them, but those will be in the queue. If Charlotte’s case is coming up next Monday, all the cases that have elected for trial before hers will be in the queue in front of it.

indicated dissent. Dame Vera Baird: I see Kieran shaking his head, but there is no other way. There is a limited opportunity to give priority to cases. Obviously a very important point is whether the defendant is in custody. Most rape defendants are not in custody, because it is a “one word against the other” case, so they cannot be given any real priority for that reason. We end up very regularly with cases that took as long as Charlotte’s. That is really awful for a large number of victims. It also gives very little to the people who want this right: 64% of people who elect for trial plead guilty before they get to trial. You have to ask why they are electing for trial if they are going to plead guilty, but they have blocked up the jury list all of that time. This is about freeing up the jury list.

Q In the previous panel, Sir Brian asked how we could model something that had never been trialled. As a panel, would you support a pilot of what the Government are suggesting, so we can take the qualitative data and see whether it makes a fundamental difference, or we should go now and not, for example, put a sunset clause in?

Can you respond briefly, please? I want to get Paulette in.

Claire Waxman: I can answer very quickly. It is a very good question, but unfortunately I think we have moved past the point at which we can pilot, because of where we are heading with the trajectory of the Crown court—the increase in the wait lists and how long victims are waiting. Modelling is very difficult, but we should not get stuck on percentages. The Government are saying around 20%, and the Institute for Government has now corrected its figures from 2% up to, I think, 9% or higher—to 15%. It is around the direction of travel and recognising that we have an overburdened Crown court. We need to move things out of the process.

Very good.

Q Thank you for allowing me back in, Chair. My question is for Professor Katrin Hohl. Let me start by saying that justice delayed is absolutely justice denied. As has been talked about, there is a lot of distrust in the system. With your vast experience in criminology and criminal justice, could you give us two clear reasons why these reforms are so needed?

We need two clear reasons in less than a minute, so fire away.

Professor Hohl: One is that the world is changed and the justice system has not updated when the size, nature and volume of cases has changed. Getting the system to cope with today’s demands would be one reason. The other reason is not addressed by the Bill and keeps being surfaced by the discussion: oversight, accountability, transparency and assurance to the public. We are in a space where the public do not trust authority that much any more, so we need more transparency. Things such as recording and reasoned verdicts would help with that. Those would be the reasons for reform—if you allow me to speak only on reasons for, not those against.

Wonderful. That was remarkably brief and most welcome. Thank you so much for your participation. We have greatly benefited from your presence, so thank you for answering all our questions. We are very pleased to let you go and move on.

Dame Vera Baird: Thank you for the opportunity.

Examination of Witnesses Farah Nazeer, Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott, Charlotte Meijer and Morwenna Loughman gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Women’s Aid, Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott, Charlotte Meijer and Morwenna Loughman. Once again, we must stick to the timings of the programme order. The Committee has agreed that this session will end at 11.25 am. I will ask the witnesses to introduce themselves briefly; I did not do so with the last panel for reasons of speed.

Farah Nazeer: Good morning. I am Farah Nazeer, chief executive officer of Women’s Aid.

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott: Morning, I am Jade Blue. I am a victim of rape.

Charlotte Meijer: Hello, I am Charlotte. I am a victim of rape and coercive control, and I was seen in a magistrates court.

Morwenna Loughman: I am Morwenna Loughman. I am a victim of rape and actual bodily harm, and I was seen in a Crown court with a jury.

Impressively brief. If we can have those kind of pithy answers—and pithy questions, by the way—we can get through our questions and cover as much ground as possible.

Q First, I am very grateful for you coming today to give evidence. We often debate things and hear from third parties but nothing is more important than hearing from people, such as yourselves, who have direct experience, even if we do not necessarily agree with the policy outcomes that might flow from that. Because it is so important, can you open with the experiences that you think are most important to get across to the Committee? Then we are clear that everybody has had an opportunity to make the points that are important to them. Farah, I know that you are representing an organisation, but perhaps you could start.

Farah Nazeer: I am conscious that there are victim survivors here as well, so I will be brief. In the Bill, we are pleased to see the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement. That is absolutely critical. We know that the vast majority of survivors of domestic abuse do not go into the criminal justice system. Only one in five women will ever report to the police, so they find themselves in the family courts. The repeal will make a huge difference to them.

We now need to see the culture around that change. We have had a pro contact culture in the family courts for a very long time. We can see through our experience working with vast numbers of survivors every day that the vast majority of judges are not as aware as they should be of domestic abuse and coercive control—they are not trauma informed. We need to see judges trained to be able to apply this effectively.

We also see that, across all those other safeguarding contexts for children, such as health and safety, police and schools, there is mandatory training required, and a framework and infrastructure. Strangely, there is not the same infrastructure here, where you are actually talking about children’s lives and wellbeing. I previously heard a comment about how we cannot mandate judges to have training, but perhaps you should be mandating, because you do so in every other safeguarding context.

For further context, the majority of people affected by domestic abuse are children; we have more children in our refuges across the country than we do adults. It is a huge safeguarding matter, and I would encourage the Committee to think about mandatory training for judges.

Q Jade, do you want to come in?

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott: I come from an angle of delay being a key factor. While my case was dropped 13 days before trial, from report to court it would have been 1,317 days, which is now becoming quite the norm. I regularly hear fellow victims advising on very similar situations, and how they feel about that and how it changes their perspective on wanting to navigate the justice process. If people are telling us that they would not necessarily come back into the system, for me, that is the clearest possible signal that change is not optional but very much overdue.

We published a letter last week in response to the Bar Council’s letter, just to try to centre lived experience in this conversation and debate, which felt like it had been predominantly missing. In statements of support, a couple of victims have described the process of waiting for court and the delays as “extreme harm”—that was from Victoria. Sarah advised that she felt “suffering, gaslighting and anxiety”.

Charlotte said that report to court was “total agony” and that we need to reduce the suffering. Jane advised that it felt like years on “eggshells, in limbo”. She said: “Waiting years with no guarantee of getting justice is like torture.”

Charlotte—another Charlotte—advised of the delays that: “They shape our lives, our ability to move forward, and our trust in justice itself.”

Those are important and strong statements from women describing that process. That is the angle that I come from.

Charlotte Meijer: We have also handed the letter over to one of your colleagues, so that the Committee can read it. I was seen in a magistrates court, so having the recording of magistrates courts that is in the Bill is incredibly important. That transparency, which I did not have, will really change victims’ lives, whether that is just to understand what happened in their trial or to hold people to account.

I did not have a good experience with my judge, but I am still pro my case being seen by a judge. I am so glad that my perpetrator chose that—although there is an issue with that in itself, as they should not be able to choose, and I am glad to see that being taken away. I am so glad I was seen in front of a judge, because to me a judge is educated in all aspects—or should be, as there is a definite need of training, as has been said—while 12 strangers off the street all have their own biases. We know that one in four men are generally perpetrators, so that could be three on the panel that is judging you and your case.

For me, having transparency really changes things. We talk about justice and the system being closed, so if we have more recording and transcripts, it will really help people. There is something that is not in the Bill that I would love to see; I have fought for the last three years for sentencing remarks to be made free, which we did earlier this year, but I believe that is not going to extend to magistrates courts. If they are now being recorded, my belief is that they should also be free in that way.

One thing that I think is also really important in this discussion, where there is so much pushback against more cases going to magistrates courts, is that coercive control essentially involves rape—it involves coercive sex—and yet it is seen in a magistrates court. When we talk about how only the worst crimes are being seen by juries, and they need to be seen by juries, what does that mean about all the other crimes, including domestic abuse and coercive control, that are being seen in magistrates courts? Are we saying that they are not getting fair trials as it is? We believe that they are, so why is there such pushback at the moment about more cases going to magistrates courts? Magistrates are laypeople as well, so there is still that accountability from the general public.

Q Thank you very much. Morwenna?

Morwenna Loughman: Thank you for having us all here. I waited two and a half years for my rape trial to go ahead. It was delayed twice—each time, the day before we were due in court. The second time it was delayed, it was actually confirmed, and then five hours later, on email, we were told that it was not going ahead. He had lied his way out on bail and breached his bail conditions 23 times. During those two and a half years, I lost my job, I lost my home and I developed acute PTSD, a side effect of which was a repeated vomiting syndrome, which meant that I had to go to hospital to have my oesophagus repaired.

I am also here to speak about juries not being bastions of infallibility. The treatment of the jury that I experienced was one of attrition. In particular, the foreman came out at one point and asked the judge, “If she’d been raped so many times, why did she not leave earlier?”

I would also like to talk about the treatment of victims while they are on the stand. During cross examination, I experienced pervasive and repeated use of rape myths and stereotypes in a way to deliberately mislead the jury against me.

I am really sorry for the experiences that you have had, and certainly for any role that we played in government in not better addressing these delays and the challenges that you faced. The consequences of that are really powerfully illustrated by the things that you have talked about, so thank you for sharing that. I really hear all the evidence that you have given.

Q Let me echo the shadow Minister’s thanks to you for being here. I appreciate that you have spoken in Parliament on other occasions, but I do not underestimate what it takes to repeat those stories again and again so that people like us can be educated on what that first hand experience feels like.

Charlotte, I wanted to pick up on something that you said. You talked about transparency and about the benefit that the recording of proceedings in the magistrates court would have. We are committed, as part of these reforms, to recording all proceedings in the magistrates court. Can you describe and explain what difference you think that might have made in cases like yours?

Charlotte Meijer: Definitely. After I gave my evidence in my trial, I left. The gallery was not somewhere I could sit safely. It was a tiny bench. His best mate and his sister were sat there, so I could not really go and sit between them.

I had said to the CPS and the police that I might want to come and hear the verdict. I was not given that opportunity, unfortunately. I got a call from my independent sexual violence adviser to say that the verdict had been made and that he was found not guilty. From that day, I really wanted to understand what had happened. For me, it was a very clearcut case of coercive control. I cannot go into too much detail, because he was found not guilty, but there was a huge age difference and there was a power imbalance and so forth, so I never understood how he was found not guilty.

The judge also made some comments. She said that, because I waited eight months to report, I was unreliable, and that I had clearly spoken to other victims of domestic abuse, so I knew what to say. Those comments really stuck by me. For my healing, and for me to be able to move on, I just needed to understand what was said in court, so I went to ask for the transcripts, of which of course in the magistrates courts there are none. It is definitely twofold: I wanted to understand what happened for my healing, but I also still want to hold that judge to account, because the things she said are not true and should not be said by someone who should be in a position of power and education.

I also think there is an important argument to be made around transparency, because people do not feel that the system is transparent—and to be fair, if it is not recorded, it is not. If you cannot sit in the gallery, if no one can watch and if there are no transcripts, then it is not. It is important to have the ability to record everything so that people can listen back, whether that is for their healing or for their understanding, or to hold people to account. We need to be able to hold people who are in power to account.

Q I have one more question. It picks up on something that you said, Charlotte, but I am happy for others to comment if they have a view.

As you have heard from previous witnesses, the primary thrust behind the Government’s measures in the Bill is to address the unacceptable delays that you have all described. However, we also have a responsibility to build back a better system. One choice that the Government made was to remove the right to elect, so that it is the court that allocates cases to the appropriate venue. We think that that makes things quicker and more efficient, but there is also a normative idea behind it that it is the court that should triage cases; you mentioned that in your remarks, Charlotte. What is your view on that reform? From a victim’s perspective, do you see sense in it, or not?

Charlotte Meijer: Definitely. Throughout the system, the victim is always on the back foot. You get told a day later—or, depending on the service that you receive, two days, three days, four days or a month later—what has gone on, but the perpetrator always knows exactly what goes on, because they have to be present and able to make decisions. Why is the perpetrator the one who can make these decisions? It makes it feel like they are in control, and that, as a victim, you are running behind to catch up.

That was exactly the case for me when I found out that he had selected a court. All of a sudden, I got a call to say, “Your perpetrator has picked a magistrates court, so that is now what will happen.” I had no choice in it. I had already had no choice for three years when he was controlling me; I had no choice for three years when he was raping me; and now I had no choice for two and a half or three years when I was in the system.

Q Thank you all for being here; I am very grateful to you for coming to give evidence to the Committee. Farah, you mentioned the presumption against parental responsibility. I agree that that is a really important step that the Labour Government are taking, but the rest of the family court process is currently out of this Bill’s scope. Could anything fundamental be introduced into this Bill to make the experience better for victims, who often go down a twin track approach through the criminal courts and family courts?

Farah Nazeer: Thank you for the question. There are a few things around presumption that could make a big difference. One is training for the entirety of the court staff, because the stories that we hear and the experiences that we support women and children through are frankly appalling. The staff are not trauma informed and there is no understanding of what a victim is going through. The courts are weaponised and survivors are brought back to the courts repeatedly. It is an appalling process. No policy area that you work on at Women’s Aid is a picnic, but this is the worst. People describe the trauma that they go through in the family courts as worse than the trauma that they endured through the abuse that they experienced.

One thing is for the court system to understand domestic abuse, understand sexual violence, understand coercive control and be trauma informed. That means having processes in which a survivor knows what is happening, understands what the next steps are and is supported through the system, and having separate places where a survivor can be. Some of it is quite basic, but it is really important to improving the survivor experience.

Another thing is the regulation of experts. We often have unregulated experts coming into the family courts to provide expertise and advice to the judge on what is happening in a relationship. You would not have unregulated experts in any safeguarding context; it is absolutely wild that you would have that. One thing we really want to see is regulated experts: psychiatrists and psychologists who are regulated by the appropriate body, rather than, seemingly, people who are just not.

The last thing that I want to focus on is the concept of parental alienation, which is often invoked in family courts. It is a concept that is not evidenced and is not recognised in psychiatric or medical practice, but it is often invoked as a concept to defend against claims of domestic abuse. What needs to happen is a child’s safety being put at the heart of the decision by a regulated expert, by a trained judge. If you get that right, you immediately improve the experience for survivors and children, and you improve the safeguarding around survivors and children. Those three things are absolutely critical to changing the culture and the experience and to ensuring safety.

Q Thank you for your testimony so far and for your bravery. Morwenna, you mentioned that you waited two and a half years before your court date. My apologies for going into the detail, but can you go through the stresses and strains of that wait and its impacts on your life and possibly on other victims as well?

Morwenna Loughman: Absolutely. One thing that kept me going—I was so close to pulling out multiple times—was that I had this sense that he had done it before. In fact, what I was later told—it was not admissible, but under the Bill it would become admissible—was that he had broken his ex partner’s leg repeatedly and raped her as well. His defence barrister stood in front of the judge, the jury and me, and said, “This man has never hurt a woman.” Given that this man was out on bail and repeatedly breaching his bail conditions, brutal is the word. I cannot overstate the impact that that has on victims. It was devastating. I did not look people in the eye for two years. I wore a hat everywhere I went so I could hide my face, because he could have been anywhere. I had to move out of my home. My home became a crime scene. I lost my job. It was daily torture. I echo what Natalie Fleet said the other week in the House of Commons: that the one thing worse than being raped is waiting four years or more to hear if people actually believe you.

Q I thank you all for being here. I know that this must be incredibly difficult. You are incredibly brave, and it is wonderful to see you channelling something that was so negative for you in a positive way, so thank you for that.

We have focused a lot on jury trials, but there is a real opportunity here to think about what we need to deliver improvements in our judicial system, because the thing we all agree on here is that it is not working as it should. We might disagree on the best way to address that, but we do agree on the fact that change is needed in some form. What would you like to see in this Bill that is not there? What is needed to address some of the issues? Any of you who want to answer, please feel free to take the question.

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott: It is a very big question. It is tricky, because I do not think that we can really ask for perfection; we are very much asking for a system that is bearable and has a bit of credibility about it. That just has to be centred, with lived experience at the forefront. So often, many victims, myself included, have said that it feels like it has gone so far to the defence side that it is no longer a justice balance. It has flipped so much on that side that I really want to urge you to consider that aspect: that it feels like the balance has gone in favour of the defence, essentially. In any decisions that you make about the Bill, just consider rebalancing that and ensuring that victims’ voices are centred in the decision making process. If increasing magistrates to the three year limit reduces the delays by even a small percentage, that can only be a positive thing. All those smaller elements will eventually snowball into more meaningful change across the entire sector. I could ramble on, so I will let someone else have a go.

Charlotte Meijer: I guess the other thing to add, which has been discussed a few times already, is the training of judges and magistrates. We have to find a way to do that—you would not let an untrained teacher into a school—because they are making decisions that mean life or death. After my not guilty verdict, I tried to kill myself, because nobody believed me, clearly. There is a huge impact. Things do need to change.

As I mentioned, I was a victim of rape. The rape did not go to court, because of many mistakes. The police offered to reinvestigate and I declined, because I knew what I would be going into and I did not want to go into that again, as it stands. A lot of that is about not just the courts, but the process leading up to it: the police and the CPS, and making sure that the police, the CPS and the courts are working together, which at the moment they are not. I am going through a three year complaints process with the police, and they just blame each other. There needs to be accountability from start to end, because, while the Government have many different institutions that you deal with as a victim, you do not always understand it. You should not have to. I should not have to know that the CPS needs to do this and the police need to do that. It should be me coming in and other people understanding that journey for me and holding them to account.

There are no consequences if the victims’ rights we have at the moment are not adhered to. I was failed on at least seven points of the victims’ rights, but there is nothing that anyone can do. It has gone up to the ombudsman, and they said, “Yes, they failed”—great.

Q At the risk of sounding like a broken record, thank you to the panel for coming in. It is very brave of you to come and relive your stories and experiences. Following on from the previous two questions, maybe this is one for Jade, Charlotte and Morwenna: given the delays and uncertainty in the court process and how that affected your recovery, how do you think the changes in the Bill will better protect victims and survivors in future from the impact that you have experienced?

Morwenna Loughman: I did not actually know that it was the defendant’s right to elect where their trial was heard, and that was a real shock to me. I echo what these extraordinary women on my right have said: it feels like a system that has been weighted against you, and there is no doubt that defendants are gaming the system. As it stands, I would absolutely not recommend this system to someone who finds themselves in my position.

I also agree with what Sir Brian Leveson said. A cultural reform needs to take place, because we are way past the mark of funding being enough. It needs a systemic, systematic, fundamental paradigm shift in how the system is run.

Jess, I cut you off earlier—forgive me.

Q I appreciate that—thank you. It was a question for you, Charlotte, about the shock that you experienced when you tried to request the sentencing remarks. Is that correct? You were quoted £20,000 and you found that people trying to get their court transcripts generally were being quoted incredibly high prices. As you mentioned, the Government have moved on that, so sentencing remarks will be available from spring next year. We are continuing to try to push that further: we do not think that sentencing remarks often tell the entire story.

There is an amendment that is going to the House of Commons today that is specifically about bail decisions and the route to verdict that juries are presented with before they go away to deliberate. Do you agree that sentencing remarks are only part of the journey that we need to be on, and that we need to be quite ambitious in ensuring victims have all the evidence in their own case, so they can start to move on and process?

Charlotte Meijer: Yes, absolutely. My campaign for all transcripts to be made available very quickly was shut down, so I have gone for little bits at a time. Sentencing remarks are an amazing change. At first, that was just for rape victims; now it is for all victims, which is great. However, if we look at RASSO cases, only 2% get a guilty verdict, so only 2% will get the free sentencing remarks. There needs to be something for the 98%.

The next thing that I have been campaigning for is the judge’s summing up, now the route to verdict, which is incredibly important. I am a not guilty verdict case, so I would not get my sentencing remarks either. It is about being able to understand. If we take that further, I believe the whole case should be available free, as it is in many other countries, or for a couple of pounds in administration costs. If we are taking it a bit at a time, the next bit would be, as you say, bail conditions and the route to verdict, to understand how someone got to that decision. That is all to aid people to understand what happened and process it a little better.

Q Thank you for sharing your experiences. It has been incredibly powerful. Jade Blue, you said that change is not optional—we need to reduce the suffering. That has resonated with me. We need to create a system that is bearable. As victims—and you have obviously experienced trials at different places in the system—do you feel that these reforms would have made the system bearable? Is there anything specific in the reforms that you could point to?

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott: I guess there is the hope of fewer adjournments and fewer last minute changes, which we hear about quite a lot. Any measure that could increase capacity for these kinds of cases is a measure we could get behind. Just having that—being able to plan your life and have reassurances that it will be going ahead—is important.

In the past, one of us mentioned floating trials for rape cases, which is, quite frankly, just absurd. Being able to have dedicated time to ensure that these cases do not become floating trials and that there is capacity for them to be seen in a prompt and timely manner would be welcome.

Morwenna Loughman: The first time my trial was listed, unbeknown to me and the rest of my family, it was listed as a floating trial, which means that two or more cases—in this instance, rape cases—are scheduled for the same time, on the same date and in the same court, on the assumption that at least two of you will drop over the course because it is so harrowing and re traumatising. That is why mine got delayed right at the last minute.

We have talked a lot about the education of judges, which is absolutely essential, but we must also consider the education of juries. As I have said, they are not bastions of infallibility. The man who raped me was convicted. He was found guilty, but not unanimously. He was sentenced to 15 years, which gives an indication as to the level of injury that I sustained.

Two members of the jury found him not guilty and acquitted him of all charges. It was a majority vote; there was no unanimity, and it took them three and a half days to deliberate, even though I had received 48 injuries and he was arrested on the scene. I could go on about the extenuating circumstances. In every sense, how did it take them three and a half days to not even conclusively decide that this man had raped me?

Charlotte Meijer: I will add to that. The removal in the Bill of the defendant’s right to elect will make the victim feel empowered, knowing that the perpetrator is not in control. As I have said, there is the recording of magistrates courts, and the Bill is our hope that the waiting time will go down. That is the core reason why we are doing this. The system cannot get any worse than it is, so the waiting going down will be a significant change.

Q Thank you very much for sharing these very powerful experiences to help all of us here make better decisions. I would like to direct my questions not to the criminal court changes, but the family court changes. I should say that I was a practising family law solicitor and represented mothers who wanted to stop abusive fathers from seeing their children, and my wife is still a practising family law solicitor, registered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society.

I turn specifically to the removal of the presumption that a child should have involvement from both parents. What do you say to the overwhelming body of evidence that for most children—not all, but most—it is in their best interests to have some contact with both parents?

Farah Nazeer: The point is about abusive relationships. If the court is set up to look at the welfare of the child primarily, if there is not a history of abuse or domestic abuse in that setting, that will invariably be the outcome. This is to protect those cases where there is abuse within the context of the relationship, so it is not a case of one thing or another thing; it clears the path so a court can look objectively at whether or not there is a safeguarding issue there for the child without the burden of the presumption of contact. You start with the welfare of the child.

Q But the law is really clear. Section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989 says that “the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”

That is already there. Section 1(3)(e) says that the court must have regard to harm that a child “has suffered or is at risk of suffering”.

Those two provisions will instantly knock out any presumption that it is in the child’s best interest to have some involvement—that does not even mean contact—of both parents. I am just trying to understand why you think this change is needed, given that those provisions are already in the law.

Farah Nazeer: Primarily because those provisions have not saved the lives of the 63 children who have died since Women’s Aid has been working on this. In spite of known abuse, the court has granted unsafe contact, primarily to abusive fathers, and those children have died as a result.

Last year we published a report called “Nineteen More Child Homicides”. Those child homicides were as a result of known perpetrators having unsafe child contact in spite of the court hearing about abuse by those fathers, predominantly—18 were fathers, one was a mother—who then murdered their children. The previous report some four years before also saw 19 children murdered in exactly the same set of circumstances. The report before that saw significantly more children murdered. What this does is set a very clear bar that you start with the welfare of the child. This is a response to the failure of that culture. That is why it is so important.

Q My point is that bar is already there. The Children Act starts with it—it is in section 1(1). I do not need to say this, but absolutely every death, particularly where the state has been involved and a court decision has been made, is a tragedy, but presumably you will agree that those tragedies will continue even with this change in the law if other things are not done within the family courts to deal with what are primarily safeguarding issues, rather than broad presumptions over children’s interests.

Farah Nazeer: Absolutely. The presumption is a really important first step because without the presumption, we will automatically default to the status quo. That is where the training and an understanding of domestic abuse and coercive control come in. As you can hear, we are not in a situation where safeguarding is applied consistently or domestic abuse or sexual violence are understood consistently. That is where the mandatory training piece has to come in to accompany the change to the law.

Q Thank you so much for being here today. I am really interested in the victim’s perspective on fairness, the treatment of victims within the current criminal justice system and the changes being made.

As a former Crown prosecutor, one aspect of the criminal justice system that concerned me was the appeals process from the magistrates court to the Crown court. As you all know, if somebody is convicted in the magistrates court, they have an automatic right to a retrial at the Crown court without having to give any reasons, regardless of whether there was a fair trial in the magistrates court or otherwise. If the victims and witnesses want to continue the process, they have to give evidence all over again through that appeal, otherwise the appeal is successful.

The Bill seeks to get rid of that automatic right and put the process more in line with the Crown court appeals process. There will have to be grounds to suggest that the original trial was unfair. As victims and survivors who have had access to the criminal justice system, what is your view on the current system of retrials and appeals from the magistrates court in terms of fairness to victims and the likelihood of victims attending to give evidence and being re traumatised? I am also interested in whether the automatic right to appeal and have a retrial is used as coercive control in the current justice system. There is a lot to unpack there, I grant you.

Charlotte Meijer: There are a lot of questions there. From my experience, we will never know whether my perpetrator picked a magistrates court because he knew that, if he was found guilty, he could have then dragged me on to a Crown court case—we do not know.

It is absolutely terrifying because, as we all know, going through a trial for the first time is horrific—it is something that I never want to do in my life again. I had the ability to go to court again for rape, and I declined it; if there had been an appeal and I had to go again to a Crown court, I probably would have dropped out. It is not something that I would want to experience twice.

There is also a really interesting thing there. What does that say about our magistrates courts? Are we basically saying that they cannot do what they should be doing? I think that changing the system strengthens the trials and credibility of magistrates courts—they should be credible, given that 90% of cases go there. It also shows that it is the final choice; the decision will be made there, unless more evidence comes forward.

On what you said about fairness to the victim, there is obviously no right to appeal for a victim if there is a not guilty verdict. I know there is a tiny bit of legislation to say that, if there is a huge amount of new evidence, they could reopen a case. However, that barely happens. You are basically told no, so how come a perpetrator can just appeal without any reason? From victims’ perspectives, and from my perspective, it is an absolute no brainer.

Q Thank you all, and can I add to everybody’s remarks about the powerful testimonies that are coming across today? Following on from Joe’s question, my question is for you, Farah. The Bill’s impact assessment states that repeal alone is unlikely to materially change the outcomes. As the chief exec of Women’s Aid, what further steps does Women’s Aid feel need to be taken to protect children from a parent?

Farah Nazeer: I think the repeal of the presumption is the cornerstone, because that gives the foundation on which the other measures rest. I think the first thing is mandatory training so that there is real understanding of coercive control and domestic abuse. I still speak to survivors daily who tell us that judges are saying, “Well, why didn’t you leave earlier? If it was that bad, why are you still there?” There is a real lack of understanding of coercive control, economic abuse and how coercive control can manifest in multiple different ways—the isolation, the withdrawal of technology and all the many things that make it impossible to leave. I think that mandatory training is really important.

The training also has to include a real understanding of the barriers that survivors face, particularly those with minoritised backgrounds, such as black women, women from minority backgrounds, deaf and disabled women and LGBTQ+ constituents. They face additional barriers and challenges in accessing justice, as well as in accessing empathy and understanding of their particular situations, which might have cultural implications, or mean different things in the domestic abuse context. We need really comprehensive training and understanding.

We also need unevidenced concepts like parental alienation to be banned from family courts, and we need actual regulated professionals—if they need to be brought in—to advise courts and judges in a way that the system and survivors can have confidence in. Right now, this is inconsistent and, in some cases, outright dangerous, as we can see from the many reports we have produced at Women’s Aid. I would say that those are the three most important things to ensure that we have a safe system.

The other piece that perhaps sits outside the provisions of the Bill is the specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence services that need to be there to support survivors through either the family court processes or the criminal court processes. Unless you have someone supporting survivors through those processes, they can be brutal. It is very hard to sustain the energy and commitment to return to those settings, time after time.

You build yourself up, as my fellow panellists have said, and then you are let down again. The experiences themselves are also deeply distressing. Without those specialist services there to support survivors, justice will not happen either way. It is really important that there is a recognition that specialist services are pivotal to ensuring that justice happens.

I know that Kieran and Jess wanted to come back in. Kieran Mullan first—briefly, please.

Q I want to ask about something called the unduly lenient sentence scheme. I will start with you, Morwenna, as a person who went through the Crown court process, because it is not applicable in the magistrates court at the moment. Were you aware of the unduly lenient sentence scheme when the sentencing was given?

Morwenna Loughman: I was aware of it. He is actually appealing the length of sentence at the moment, but has not yet been granted leave to do so.

Q I guess I am focusing on the perspective of victims and victims’ right to appeal. As I mentioned, with magistrates court cases you do not have a right to say that you thought the sentence was unduly lenient. I think that is because, when the scheme was set up, the maximum sentence was six months—perhaps there are questions about the ability and meaningfulness of that.

Obviously, an increased sentencing length means that someone could be sentenced for three years in a magistrates court, without a right to appeal that sentence. This question is to all three of you. Do you think it is important to ensure that, even if we increase sentence lengths in the magistrates court, victims have the opportunity, in certain circumstances, to appeal sentences that they think are unduly lenient?

Charlotte Meijer: Yes.

Jade Blue McCrossen Nethercott: Straight and to the point: yes.

Excellent. That is the best answer we have had—definitive and short. Great.

Q My question is to Morwenna, although the rest of the panel might be able to feed in. Morwenna, you spoke about the impact of the adjournment of your case. I do not underestimate how re traumatising that is: you build yourself up to the day when you think you will be in court, only to be told that that will not happen. I think you mentioned that that happened twice.

Morwenna Loughman: Yes.

You also spoke about the concept of floating cases. Were you told beforehand that your case had been listed as a floating case? The reason I ask is that the legislation does not address how many adjournments we have. There is no mechanism in the legislation—I am happy to be corrected by the Minister—to address how often cases are adjourned. Listing officers will continue to list floating cases because they know that so many victims drop out of the process, or the CPS comes back and says that it does not have enough evidence to convict, and so on.

Did you have an ISVA supporting you through the process? Were you communicated with well enough? Did you know that your case could fall at that final hurdle? The most important thing is what victims such as yourselves would like to see from that process to understand that your cases could get adjourned, were they listed as floating cases.

Morwenna Loughman: I was never told that that was a possibility. Again, that fundamental lack of understanding points to a system weighted against the victim and against the complainant. You are hermetically sealed off from a system that has been designed to dismiss and re silence you because there is this sense that you need help, or might seek help, and to be told what to say on the stand. I would not have been there for any reason other than that I had been raped, but there was this sense that I needed to be kept at arm’s length from the system. If this Bill can change how the whole justice process is seen, that is absolutely what we should be fighting for.

I will call the Minister and Alex, and try to squeeze them both in the time.

Q Listing was just raised and, obviously, listing is not dealt with in the Bill; it is a judicial function. We have heard about some really good practices in Liverpool. Outside of this Bill, we are working with the judiciary on a national listing framework, which the judiciary will administer. I want to really quickly get the view of the panel, because you mentioned floating lists and how that was a problem in your case. I think we need to hear those views as the judiciary develops that national listing framework.

Alex, ask your question too, and then there will be a minute to answer it.

Q Thank you, Chair. I have had the privilege of listening to all of you speak before; thank you very much for being here. I think you were all here when Sir Brian Leveson was giving evidence earlier. He said that the only way to tackle delays was to do all three: reform, investment and modernisation.

As victim survivors, how would you feel if the Government adopted the Opposition’s proposal, which is to only do two of those three things and leave one on the table that might speed up the delays in the criminal justice system? Do you think the Government would be going far enough if they left options on the table?

Last word, witnesses—over to you.

Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott: I think we need to go full force. Now is the time for change. This is a once in a-lifetime opportunity to—I am not going to swear—get stuff done. If we do not do it now, it would be a missed opportunity. It is about centring lived experience: all these rippling changes being put forward will have trickling effects on the wider justice system, including support services. Centring victims’ voices in that is pivotal.

Charlotte Meijer: Agreed.

That brings us to the end of our session. My task is a very pleasant one: to thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Your evidence has been invaluable to this Committee and really worth while. I will just add this. As Members of Parliament, we meet all kinds of constituents with the most life changing challenges who face up to the most dreadful and awful things. Sometimes those people turn that to something positive, and that is what you have done. Thank you so much for coming today.

That brings us to the end of our morning session—

Hang on a minute! The Opposition are getting on the wrong side of me; that is very dangerous. That brings us to the end of our session. We will meet again at 2 pm this afternoon here in the Boothroyd Room.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Stephen Morgan.)

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairs: † Dawn Butler, Sir John Hayes, Dr Rupa Huq, Christine Jardine

† Berry, Siân (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)

† Bishop, Matt (Forest of Dean) (Lab)

† Brown Fuller, Jess (Chichester) (LD)

† Farnsworth, Linsey (Amber Valley) (Lab)

† Hack, Amanda (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)

† Hamilton, Paulette (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)

† Kohler, Mr Paul (Wimbledon) (LD)

† McIntyre, Alex (Gloucester) (Lab)

† Morgan, Stephen (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty’s Treasury)

† Mullan, Dr Kieran (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)

† Osborne, Tristan (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)

† Paul, Rebecca (Reigate) (Con)

Qureshi, Yasmin (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)

† Robertson, Joe (Isle of Wight East) (Con)

† Sackman, Sarah (Minister for Courts and Legal Services)

† Slinger, John (Rugby) (Lab)

† Ward, Melanie (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)

Robert Cope, Dominic Stockbridge, Francis Morse, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Kirsty Brimelow KC, Chair, Bar Council of England and Wales

Riel Karmy Jones KC, Chair, Criminal Bar Association

Claire Davies KC, Leader of the South Eastern Circuit

Samantha Hillas KC, Leader of the Northern Circuit

Caroline Goodwin KC, Leader of the North Eastern Circuit

Claire Throssell MBE, victim and campaigner

Doug Downey, Attorney General of Ontario, and the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Barrie–Springwater–Oro Medonte

Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett, Lancashire Constabulary (also NPCC lead for Serious Violence Reduction and Public Health Approaches in Policing)

Daniel Flury, HMCTS SRO for Independent Review of Criminal Courts implementation, HM Courts & Tribunals Service

Sir Richard Henriques

His Honour Clement Goldstone KC

Lord Burnett of Maldon

Fiona Rutherford, Chief Executive, JUSTICE

Emma Torr, Co Director, APPEAL

Cassia Rowland, Senior Researcher, Institute for Government

Tim Crosland, Director, Plan B.Earth (and co founder of Defend Our Juries)

Sarah Sackman KC MP, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services, Ministry of Justice

Public Bill Committee

Wednesday 25 March 2026

(Afternoon)

[Dawn Butler in the Chair]

Courts and Tribunals Bill

The Committee deliberated in private.

Examination of Witnesses

Kirsty Brimelow and Riel Karmy Jones gave evidence.

Q69 Before we start hearing from witnesses, do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill? No. We will now hear oral evidence from the Bar Council of England and Wales and the Criminal Bar Association. We have until 2.30 pm for this panel. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Kirsty Brimelow: My name is Kirsty Brimelow, a King’s counsel. My practice, until my election as chair of the Bar Council, where I started on 1 January this year, was in criminal law, public law and international law. In particular, I have worked on reforming sexual offences legislation across Europe and also conducted and led training to improve practices in court for victims, particularly in sexual offences globally. I am now chair of the Bar Council, which means I lead around 18,000 barristers across England and Wales.

Riel Karmy Jones: My name is Riel Karmy Jones. I am a criminal barrister with over 30 years’ experience, and I am also chair of the Criminal Bar Association. I became King’s counsel in 2015, and a significant part of my practice has revolved around prosecuting cases involving serious sexual offences and vulnerable victims. I was senior counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and led the investigation into the Roman Catholic Church—specifically, the English Benedictine congregation. I have spent a considerable part of the last 30 years working on cases with victims, so they are very much at the forefront of my mind when I give this evidence.

Q Good afternoon to you both, and thank you very much for coming. Ms Karmy Jones, I want to pick up your remark about having victims at the heart of your thinking. You will have heard evidence, either through the earlier hearings or in the public debates surrounding this issue, that some victims’ advocates are insisting that these reforms are necessary to support victims. Has that give you any pause for thought about the positions that you have taken? If not, why not?

Riel Karmy Jones: We start from a presumption of innocence in a criminal case, so if I say “victim” and “complainant”, no disrespect is meant. Hearing any victim speak about what they have been through is shocking and has a huge impact on all of us at the criminal Bar, but we are the ones who, day in and day out, deal with them and have to explain to them why things have gone wrong.

One of the things that I heard this morning gave me pause for thought, in the sense that some of our processes are poor. Clearly, the processes in place are not being properly followed. That does not change my approach to the Bill, because fundamentally there is a disconnect between clauses 1 to 7, on the right to jury trial, and clauses 8 to 16.

As I will be arguing, we have issues with clauses 1 to 7 and think they should be struck out. We largely support clauses 8 to 16—the victims measures. They are good measures, and in fact there are some things that we would propose to strengthen them further. I would encourage you to look that way. This Bill is about making cases move more swiftly, and jury trials do not impact on that question, as even Sir Brian Leveson acknowledged this morning.

Q Do you think it is unfair to characterise people like you, who oppose those elements, as being in any way not concerned with victims—as being anti victims’ rights or experiences?

Riel Karmy Jones: Absolutely. I have sat and held the hands of many, many victims of really serious sexual offences. I have talked to them before, during and after the cases. Trust me when I say that those who prosecute these cases feel very intensely about the victims, so that would be a complete mischaracterisation—and frankly, it has hit the criminal Bar very hard and made us quite angry.

Q Do you want to add anything to that, Ms Brimelow?

Kirsty Brimelow: It is really sad that some of the political messaging has been positioning barristers against victims. It is barristers who prosecute in the courts every day and give voice to victims and complainants in court, enabling their evidence to be heard. It is the barristers in court who apply the law and safeguards around those witnesses so that they are not subject to inappropriate questioning—I know we will come on to that.

The key to your question is that nobody wants to see complainants—victims—waiting, and having the trauma of waiting. That is what we are focusing on. In doing that, we take into account the non governmental organisations that represent the violence against women and girls sector. Rights of Women was the lead NGO on a letter a couple of weeks ago—it decided to write it independently, without having been approached. It set out its concern about reducing jury trials. Its concern is not only that there are victims of violence who become defendants but, as it sets out clearly in the letter, there is, unfortunately, discrimination and a lack of trust in the criminal justice system.

Overall, the jury system is seen as the only part that still works, so why are we focusing on that? We want to focus on all those aspects that will reduce delays now, rather than hacking at a constitutional cornerstone, which also reflects community participation.

Q Right. You mentioned the letter. It also refers to these reforms as a potential distraction from some of the hard work that you talk about. You may have heard that this morning the Victims’ Commissioner characterised that letter as being purely about the perspective of women and girls in relation to their being defendants. Do you think that is a fair and accurate characterisation of that letter?

Kirsty Brimelow: No, it is not, because that is not actually what it says. The letter sets out that they are against curbing jury trials because of the lack of trust in the criminal justice system, and that impacts those from minoritised communities in particular. We know from the statistics that black defendants and women by majority elect to go to the Crown court. Those are the ones who have trust in the jury system. That is the objection within the letter. I am sorry to see that she is mischaracterised in that way, because that is not what the letter is about.

The letter does say that it is a crude approach to characterise victims as simply those who are complainants: victims can also end up as defendants, and we have had many examples of that. I had a case at the end of last year representing a woman who was subject, clearly, to coercive control and, in part, physical abuse. She ended up a defendant, and the jury heard from her about how she ended up getting in the position she did alongside the man who was controlling her. They acquitted her; they convicted him.

Q I am going to direct my questions to Ms Brimelow. I think we agree that the delays in our criminal justice system are a scandal and that something needs to be done about them, don’t we?

Kirsty Brimelow: Yes, of course. That has always been the position.

Q And I think we agree that there have been multiple drivers of how we got here. One of those drivers was the real term cuts to justice spending under the previous Government, including cuts to legal aid and court closures. That was one of the drivers, wasn’t it?

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree that it is one Government. I would say, across Governments, there is a lot to answer for. We saw a rapid cutting of MOJ funding between 2009-10 and 2022-23: it declined by 22.4%. We are about 30% below where we should be.

Q So there was a cut in investment. There have been several things that we needed to do, some of which have been welcomed by both the Bar Council and the CBA—not least the uncapping of sitting days, which the Government have committed to.

Kirsty Brimelow: That is welcomed.

Q That is welcomed. It also includes the introduction of match funding for criminal Bar pupillages; the need for action on prisoner transport, which needs to happen and which you pointed to as an issue; and the need for improvement in our listing practices. We need to do all those things—that much is clear, and we agree with that. But you will have seen the conclusion of the independent review of criminal courts, which is supported by the Government’s conclusion that, of themselves, investment and efficiencies will not be enough to keep up with the demand coming into the system, let alone bring down the backlog. They simply will not, will they?

Kirsty Brimelow: Well, the Institute for Government disagrees with that. The Institute for Government says that if you focus on productivity and capacity in the courts—

Yes.

Kirsty Brimelow: You asked the question; just let me answer. If you focus on that, then that is the way to get back to 2016-17 productivity. The Institute for Government does not agree and says that it is highly uncertain, and even Sir Brian says that his time estimates are highly uncertain and based on assumptions.

Q We will come on to that in a second. I have a chance to ask questions of the IFG a little later. You have not put forward any alternative reforms. You have said—in fact, to be fair, it was Ms Karmy Jones who said it—that you reject the reforms contained in clauses 1 to 7 of the Bill in their entirety and that you would reject any constraint on jury trials.

Let us come back to the IFG because the IRCC’s modelling is clear that, without structural reform, we will not bring down the backlog. A key conclusion of the IFG is that the major constraint on productivity is the workforce challenge. We know that 4% of Crown court cases did not go ahead last year because of the lack of barristers. The Bar Council and the CBA have pointed that out, and we know that the number of publicly funded silks has dropped by a quarter in the last decade. That is right, is it not?

Kirsty Brimelow: Yes.

Q So you would agree with me that we cannot get those numbers of criminal lawyers back up to where they were overnight, can we? It is going to take years to train enough barristers to address that aspect of the productivity challenge, is it not?

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree with that, because the positive news is that when there is an investment in legal aid, such as happened in 2022—unfortunately, after criminal barristers had to take action—we see an increase in barristers coming back into criminal law. They are already trained—they have just left to go into other areas—but when there is an increase in legal aid, they have come back. Another Government pledge has been to increase legal aid by around £27 million. Our recommendation is that the sooner that can be done, the sooner you will hopefully reverse this and bring back some of the KCs who have left.

May I pick up one other point? We are suggesting amendments to the Bill. We are completely alongside the Criminal Bar Association on restrictions on clauses 1 to 7. One proposal that we say will make a huge difference is, instead of having a court without a jury, having a court with a jury that focuses on sexual offences and domestic abuse cases. I think that was in the Labour party manifesto. Focus on those cases of the vulnerable people who are waiting. Bring those forward, prioritise those and reduce delays for those people.

Q I think there is consensus between us that we need to grow capacity in the criminal legal profession. I think where we are disagreeing is that we say that it is unrealistic that that will happen in the short term. It is going to take years to build the Bar back to what it was in 2016, from where it is currently. It is going to take investment, legal aid and match funding for pupillages, and it will take years.

Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree, because we have the example from 2022, where you have the increase in the barristers coming back. That happened within that first year. You could see the increase in the barristers coming back.

Looking at the courts, we can see that happen when they are given the tools they need—where the courts cap is lifted. Woolwich in 2023 was an example of that, when it could then operate properly and start to reduce its backlog. When the courts were capped again, and they had reduced capacity and lost two judges, their backlog started going up again. We have plenty of examples where it is not as you are saying.

Q We both agree that we need investment. We agree that we need to do a major drive on efficiency and the Government are doing that. Sir Brian’s team concluded that both those things would not be enough to bring down the backlog. My question to the Bar is, “What do you know that Sir Brian’s team does not?”

Kirsty Brimelow: We know, operationally, what works. You will hear some more of that from the circuit leaders who are giving evidence. I have pointed to Woolwich as an example in 2023. We are agreed on the fact that we need to reduce delays. We focus on, “Where are the delays happening?” If we are serious about reducing them, we need to look at where they are happening.

You have heard a lot from victims of rape this morning. It should be made clear to them that the delays are weighted pre court, so the median average that a rape victim is waiting is happening in the investigation stage and the charge stage—it is around two years. The median average currently from receipt in Crown court to completion is around a year. That is still too long, but we need to focus, therefore, on what is happening with the CPS and what is happening on investigation.

Charlotte Nichols was mentioned this morning by Vera Baird. In her case, she had more than two years waiting before getting to court. When it got to court, it was eight and a half months to conclude, so it is important to look at where the problem is and focus there.

Q Thank you both very much for being here—we really appreciate your time. What effect could the Bill’s proposed changes to jury trials have on newly qualified legal professionals, who quite often cut their teeth on jury trials with lesser sentences? Also, at the other end of the profession, have you done any polling or modelling to see whether this could impact the number of legal professionals staying in the profession?

Kirsty Brimelow: We have heard—and I agree with this—that we already have the data, and I believe some more data is coming over the next weeks. We already have the data to show that a quarter of King’s counsel have now left working in publicly funded work. As I have said, we have the retention back on our junior Bar, which is very positive after the investment in legal aid, but we need the legal aid promise to come through quickly to keep that retention, and hopefully attract back the KCs.

However, if jury trials are removed for those cases where juniors are currently very much cutting their teeth—they are doing those trials in their early years of practice before a jury—it may well be a disincentive to doing criminal law. From my own experience of coming from a mixed, publicly funded chambers—we do not do private cases, but legal aid cases across all the jurisdictions—there is always that persuasion with our young barristers as to what area of law they will go into. The persuasion that lands is, “You will have the advocacy with the jury trial.”

If they do not have that advocacy, my fear is that we will lose our junior practitioners, who are very important, or we could end up with very junior practitioners whose first jury trial may have a level of seriousness beyond their ability, which again impacts on the quality of justice, and there could be a potential increase in miscarriages of justice.

Q Thank you. The victims in the previous session spoke about a necessary change in culture in the criminal system, which I think is a shared view across all the parties represented today. Can either of you see anything in the legislation before us that will provide that change in culture?

Kirsty Brimelow: I am going to hand over to Riel on this. We support much of the reform from clause 8 onwards, on which I will hand over to her. We are all absolutely there to make improvements; no system is perfect, and the criminal justice system absolutely is not. We are there ready to support the reforms, and we are very experienced in bringing in reforms. Some of the issues I heard spoken of this morning included clearly terrible communication issues, where people were not informed as to what was going on, and they should be fairly easy to sort out.

Also, we very much support the idea that there is a lawyer advising complainants, which is another proposal that has been put forward by the Government. We support that because complainants often get wrong information from NGOs or the police—doing their best—about what might be happening, and what might happen to them in court. That, in itself, can cause them to be anxious about what might happen, and it can contribute to the attrition rate. We have always had an issue with an attrition rate in sexual offences cases, and each time we need to look at why that is, so we welcome any proposals. I will hand over to Riel.

We have a very limited amount of time, but please come in, Riel.

Riel Karmy Jones: In terms of the culture, all the things that were spoken about this morning have no relevance, in a sense, to jury trial. Juries are in the best possible position to consider the situation that victims are in; they are more likely to have someone who really understands, who is from the community and who may have some experience themselves of what the victim has gone through, or to know someone who has.

To change the culture, some of which I do not really recognise—it may be slightly older than the way things have progressed now—we would firmly recommend creating a specialist sexual/domestic abuse court. We would add to that by saying there should be specific training for the judges and jury—the jury could have a short period of training—and we would say that the prosecution and the defence need to be qualified or accredited advocates to deal with this sort of work. One of the problems we have at the moment is that the prosecution are accredited, but the defence are not, so questions coming from the defence are not as properly informed by the training that they could receive. Specialist court facilities, aimed at the comfort and safety of complainants, accommodating special measures, are really important, because at the moment we have victims in terrible rooms, with the ceilings coming down and water leaking through, and having to share loos, potentially with other witnesses in the case, risking coming across defendants in the court building.

We need to have stricter time limits on case preparation, and more active case management, and we suggest a national protocol on the approach to third party material and the review of third party material, and disclosure with strict time limits applicable to mirror the service of the case—also, fixed trial dates.

One of the issues that complainants in sexual and domestic violence cases have to contend with is that the defendant is often on bail. That is why they get shunted to the end of the line, because we have custody time limits that apply to custody cases. We need to consider a mechanism to give priority to these very important cases, and we think that a specialist domestic abuse court could do that.

Thank you. We have two minutes and lots of Members who would like to speak.

Q I will ask a quick question for clarification before I ask my substantive question. Ms Karmy Jones, thank you, but I am a simple employment solicitor, so apologies, but for full transparency, will you confirm something? According to the Institute for Government, barristers may be reluctant to replace Crown court cases with magistrates court cases because they pay less. Will you confirm to the Committee that your members would get less in fees for magistrate cases than in a Crown court case?

Riel Karmy Jones: It depends what we are talking about—

Just as a general ballpark figure— Riel Karmy Jones: It is less, yes.

Q I will come on to my substantive question then, because I have not got much time. You said that we should not remove the right to elect, as juries act as a safeguard against prejudice, but 90% of cases are already heard without a jury. I suggest that those cases have no safeguards against prejudice. Building on that, we know that a number of the more serious cases in the magistrates courts are dealt with by a district judge sitting alone. Is the position of the Criminal Bar Association that those should be replaced by full jury trials?

Riel Karmy Jones: We are not suggesting replacing district judges with full jury trials. What we are saying is: do not lose jury trials for those more important, more serious cases in the Crown court.

If we have very quick questions and responses, I can perhaps squeeze in two more.

Q Riel, in my submission from the Criminal Bar Association, there is concern about risks to judges in public criticism. The example given is on sexual offences, but I want to ask about protest related offences and more political crimes, where the victim is the state or a powerful actor. Would the risks to judges also apply in those cases?

Riel Karmy Jones: Yes. We are already seeing that in immigration cases. We are seeing judges being targeted and threatened as a result of decisions made in immigration cases. The problem is that the judge will set out his decision making in writing; it will be on a transcript; and, under these proposals, it will go to a victim. It is wrong, not for those decisions to go to a complainant in a case, but for them then to be pored over and disagreed with.

What does the judge say if they do not believe a complainant victim? They have to say so, and that could lead to huge disruption and upset, whereas with a jury, those people are largely anonymous and protected by reason of their anonymity. It is far rarer for us to get jurors who are targeted and attacked than it will be, in our view. As the Lady Chief Justice pointed out recently, it is far more likely that judges will be targeted as a result of their decision making.

Q Today, 58 out of 516 Crown court rooms are not sitting. Do you agree that it would be better to address that issue—and how would we address it?—rather than limiting jury trials?

Kirsty Brimelow: May I deal with that briefly? Absolutely, if you open the courts, then the courts can hear the cases. Also, let us look at the reason for the lack of productivity. Our courts are just not sitting as many hours as they did in 2016 or 2017. We should get the number of hours back up, and cut out the delays even in the courts that are sitting. That includes looking at the defendants being brought to court late. We are collecting data on that, and it is an astonishingly high number. Around a quarter of the data we have collected so far shows defendants being brought more than five hours late to court. You attack that, do the type of listing that is working now, bring the investment in quickly—

Order. Sorry to stop you, but that brings us to the end of time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. Sorry it was so short.

Examination of Witnesses Claire Davies, Samantha Hillas and Caroline Goodwin gave evidence.

Q We will now hear evidence from Claire Davies KC, Samantha Hillas KC and Caroline Goodwin KC. We have until 3 pm for this panel. Could the witnesses briefly introduce themselves for the record?

Claire Davies: I am Claire Davies, King’s counsel. I am leader of the south eastern circuit, which covers London and the whole of the south east of England. My main practice is in criminal law.

Samantha Hillas: My name is Sam Hillas KC. I am leader of the northern circuit, which is in the north west of England, from Chester to Carlisle. I am a family barrister.

Caroline Goodwin: My name is Caroline Goodwin KC. I practise in criminal law. I am the leader of the north eastern Circuit. We cover a very large geographical area, from Newcastle through to Sheffield, encompassing Leeds and York and so on.

Q Given your experience of seeing how proceedings flow in the courtroom on a day to day basis, I want to talk to you about modelling and the estimates of how much time will be saved. In relation to the proposed new Crown Court bench division, Sir Brian Leveson’s report says: “Modelling assumes cases sent to the CCBD are 20% quicker to try than Crown Court cases with a jury and that the same proportion of cases ultimately plead guilty. However this… 20% assumption is highly uncertain”.

Do you agree that the central assumption is highly uncertain? What are your views about how will this operate in practice?

Claire Davies: We agree it is uncertain. When you go into a court trial process involving a jury, the types of cases that will go before these courts are generally the three to four or maybe five day trials. When you look at those, the jury involvement is such that the only time that you would really save, so far as we can see, is in the swearing in of a jury, which takes 15 to 20 minutes, and maybe a factual summing up from the judge, which tends not to be very long in these cases. We therefore see the saving as minimal, because to maintain open justice, the evidence must be heard in court. That is very important for the public to understand what happens in our courtrooms.

Sir Brian Leveson suggested this morning that judges would be more interventionist, saving more time and getting to the point. While one can see on the one hand that that is an attractive argument, it simply cannot happen because the defendant and the witnesses are there and the public needs to know what the evidence is. It is all very well saying that a judge can read the papers effectively, and that they do not need to elaborate on it in court and can get to the issues, but that would defeat the very important principle of open justice, so we do not agree that the time savings will be as significant for those reasons.

Q The other thing that Sir Brian says—this is in relation to the Crown court bench division, but it is replicated across all his major recommendations—is: “Should the MoJ consider pursuing this course of action, it may wish to consider undertaking further detailed analysis in order to understand the potential time saving fully.”

Besides the stakeholder engagement exercise, are you aware of any of the “further detailed analysis” that Sir Brian said was necessary before coming to any conclusions about the time savings of the policies?

Samantha Hillas: No.

Thank you.

Q It is good to see you all again. We have had a number of engagements over the past year, so it is good to be able to engage once again. You have heard a number of different witnesses from a number of different angles on the scandalous delays in our criminal courts. As circuit leaders, I expect you agree with me that something needs to be done to address it. I am looking at Claire, because I know the problems are especially acute in the south east. I am right about that, aren’t I?

Claire Davies: Yes, and I agree that something has to be done.

Q No doubt you would also welcome the investment the Government are making in uncapping sitting days and thereby removing the financial limit on how much you and others can sit in the Crown court.

Claire Davies: Absolutely. That is something we have wanted for a very long time now, because that would have seen an immediate effect before now.

Q You will have seen the conclusion of the independent review of criminal courts: that, notwithstanding maximum investment and efficiency measures that doubtless need to be taken, those two things alone are incapable of reducing the backlog. That is the evidence of the independent review.

Claire Davies: We do not necessarily agree. The difficulty has been that the sitting days have been cut not just under one Government, but more. The Nightingale courts that were dealing with the bail cases that are the ones at the end of the outstanding cases that we have, certainly in London and the south east, were closed. I think we have one that has just been made permanent, thank you—Chichester. They were there, and that is what kept part of our outstanding cases under control.

Q I understand that you do not agree, but I do not understand that any of the circuits have produced independent evidence of their own to suggest that that conclusion is wrong and that we can bring down the backlog without some form of reform. I understand you disagree with the reforms the Government are pursuing, but I have not seen any evidence that it can be reduced absent reform from the circuits.

Caroline Goodwin: Can I deal with this? The reality is that we have not been able to do this. Because there has been a consistent cap on sitting days, judges have not been able to open up court days. They have not been able to run blitz days where they can really take hold of a case and shake it and say, “Right, what is going on?” We have not had any great directives to the CPS to say, “When you’re charging these cases, you need to review these very thoroughly.” Throughout this entire time, the criminal Bar and the entire justice system has been brought to its knees. So if you are saying, “Is there any empirical evidence that this doesn’t work on your circuit, Ms Goodwin?”, we have not been able to do it.

If I can finish on this point, I can point to where our courts have taken over pleas, have been able to open up another court and have brought in 300 extra cases, which is really important, and 80 of those are RASSO. The example I am going to give you on my circuit at the coalface is Teesside. Newcastle has also been enabled in the last six months to open up one more case. The reality is that all their class 2 cases, which are very serious cases dealing with sexual offences, are now listed within their time limits. So if you want to see if there is a change, it is happening now. You just have to let us do it. May I make this very clear? I do acknowledge that you have finally lifted up the cap on the sitting days, but we need it consistently. You can twist all these figures around however you want to, but you have to let us try.

Q One final point. I am happy for each and any one of you to come in. There is certainly no twisting of figures. These are figures produced by an independent review and Government modelling. But you are absolutely right: there needs to be maximalist investment, which is why we have uncapped sitting days. I entirely agree, and there are some excellent models from Liverpool and elsewhere, about blitz courts, and we are beginning blitz courts in London and the south east as of April. But the conclusion of the Government’s modelling and the independent review is that those things alone, vital though they will be—we cannot do this without them—will not bring down the backlog. There is no other evidence that the backlog can be brought down without some form of reform, is there?

Samantha Hillas: The difficulty is that we do not necessarily accept the assertions about the time saving. Let us take at face value the assertion that there is a 20% time saving, which takes a five day case down to four. Clause 5 says that the judge has to produce a judgment as soon as reasonably possible thereafter, so when is that going to be written? That is your fifth day. That is what the judge is going to have to do on that day.

Claire Davies: Can I answer the question about the lack of evidence? Wood Green Crown court is a prime example. In August 2023, Harrow Crown court was closed. It has still not reopened; in fact, it reopens on 13 April, due to the state of the building. Wood Green was using Hendon magistrates as four Crown courtrooms, and it got its backlog down to near pre covid levels. When Harrow closed, Wood Green lost those four Crown courtrooms, because of course Harrow had to function somewhere. The consequence was that Wood Green’s backlog went up. That is a simple example of what extra court space does.

Maidstone has been listing into Southwark and Woolwich. There have been ramifications for Woolwich and Southwark, because they have lost courtrooms, but giving them more court space has enabled them to reduce their lists too. That is without any other efficiencies, and we say that the efficiencies must be tried first. For example, in the trial I am in at the moment in Winchester, prisoner escort has not managed to bring the defendants to court on time for most of the trial, even though they are in Winchester prison.

Thank you very much. The Minister wants to come in very quickly, and then I will bring in the Lib Dem spokesperson.

Q Just finally to Ms Davies, if I may, you said that efficiencies must be tried first. That argument has been aired very widely. Do you have any sense of how long those efficiencies would take to bring down the backlog? If we pursued all the efficiencies, which the Government are doing—I have mentioned some examples—and maintained uncapped sitting days, how long would it take to bring down the backlog?

Claire Davies: We do not know, because we have not been provided with the data that the Government have. We have consistently asked for the data.

It is in the impact assessment.

Claire Davies: The impact assessment does not provide data.

Q Thank you all for being here today and providing evidence to the Committee. Can any of you outline the reasons why Crown court hearing time has dropped to an average of 3.2 hours per sitting day? Is that drop anything to do with jury trials?

Claire Davies: I think we would all agree that it is nothing to do with jury trials. What is happening is that, due to a lack of sitting days, judges are having to deal with more administrative matters and other hearings before they begin a trial, if of course any of those are in custody. If there is a delay—they are not always delayed, of course—that pushes matters back. A trial will take longer, and they do not have the whole day available to them. They do not have 10 am till 4.30 pm, which is a court sitting day; they get only part of that day. That is what is eating into the hours—or it is one of the reasons.

Q Thank you. At some point, I would love to talk you through my amendments, which suggest fundamental reforms but not by curtailing the right to a jury trial. This is probably quite a simple question, which will mean that we can move on, but do you believe that the Crown court backlog could be fixed without reforms to jury trials?

Caroline Goodwin: Yes, I do. As I have pointed out, you have to allow us the opportunity to put in place very key and significant changes. Frankly, senior judges have already identified that they would enable us to get through this backlog.

In addition, the investigative stage needs to be got hold of and have a coach and horses driven through it. One of the big complaints that we have been hearing about today—it is a terrible complaint, when one thinks about it—is about the time it takes from investigation stage through to Crown court and the final determination with a jury. All those things could be addressed with efficiencies, which do not mean that you have to remove the right to a jury trial. Let us focus on those.

Let me make it clear that it is very commendable that this large investment has been put in, but it brings us back to where we ought to have been after the last 10 years, in which we have suffered significant cuts. There is a will from the judiciary and practitioners; we just have to be able to make it work. You have experienced judges telling you, “I need blitz courts. I need more courts,” so let us open them, staff them, resource them and make them work.

Q My question concerns appeals. I am looking to see whether there is synergy here. Across your regions, 1% of cases that come from magistrates are appealed, so, accepting that the magistrates system is working, why do you not accept the principle of extending magistrates’ sentencing powers—as we have done in the past from six months to 12 months—from 12 months to three years?

Claire Davies: It is 18 months. The difficulty is the percentage of appeals against conviction, because we take a slightly different approach in relation to appeals against sentence. With appeals against conviction, the success rate is something like 40%. I understand that there is no data that demonstrates whether that is because witnesses do not attend the retrial hearing or simply because a wrong decision was reached in the lower courts. What concerns me is when you have the chair of the Magistrates’ Association giving evidence before the Select Committee that he would like the right of appeal retained.

There are errors and mistakes made, but if the length of sentence is extended, it will potentially increase that risk. The other difficulty that follows is that the number of those who qualify for legal aid will reduce, which means that they will not have access to legal advice as to whether they should be appealing or not, and if restrictions are brought in on the basis on which you can appeal, they will not be adequately equipped to launch what should perhaps be a successful appeal.

Q Are you familiar with the argument of the retired Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Alan Moses, in The Guardian this week, that a third of the backlog could be cleared if we employed retired judges to undertake a winnowing exercise to clear the cases that will never come to court, and is he correct?

Claire Davies: I have not read that article, but if there is more judiciary, then there is more access for people. A lot of residents are taking the approach of looking at the outstanding cases, looking at the sorts of cases that may not go to trial, and bringing them in. As well as more judiciary to assist in that process, or to crack through the trials that there are, there would need to be the courtroom availability, and of course what has to come with more courtroom availability is staff so that the courts run efficiently. We would welcome retired judges to come back. There are many who currently sit in retirement in any event.

Caroline Goodwin: It would be absolutely brilliant to have these very senior judges come back. They have an absolute wealth of knowledge that they can bring. If they are prepared to operate in that role, it is a win win situation. If we can instantly recruit more judiciary to deal with these cases, then it is something we should be proactively looking at.

Q It is fair to say that the CPS’s breadth of experience across the criminal justice system is unparalleled, given that it takes cases through the system, from advising the police at charge through to the magistrates court, the Crown court and the appeals court. Is it right that it is in a good position to understand the system fully, from start to finish?

Caroline Goodwin: It might understand the system, but it is about the application of the system. You may have a set of papers that comes in from the police and is sent to a reviewing lawyer—

I am getting to my point; I am very conscious of time. It is fair to say that the CPS has a good overview of the system.

Caroline Goodwin: Yes.

Q Thank you. Tom Guest, one of the directors at the CPS, recently gave evidence to the Justice Committee. He said: “Our view is that we have gone far beyond the point where piecemeal or non legislative solutions will suffice.”

He went on to say that the official view of the CPS is that the 20% time saving projection regarding jury trials in the independent report is “very much on the conservative side”.

Does the CPS not have a credible voice on those two points?

Caroline Goodwin: May I deal with that? It may be a credible voice in terms of having an argument in the debate, but it is not actually addressing the efficiencies of the Crown Prosecution Service; it is merely saying, “Yes, we think 20% could be a parsimonious figure. It could be a far greater saving of time.” But if we turn and look inwards, at ourselves, the CPS is the start of a lot of the difficulties that there can be around case preparation. That is why I say that there needs to be a rigorous approach when material is sent in to a reviewing lawyer, which is really when the process starts. They need to be saying, “I need you to find me that telecommunications evidence. I need to make sure that that media evidence from those telephones has been produced.” All that should be starting from the word go.

Tom Guest may be right in terms of—[Interruption.] May I finish, please? He may have a voice in the debate and the argument, but in so far as the efficiencies of the service are concerned, the CPS really needs to start looking at itself, and then perhaps it can come on a very strong footing.

Q Indeed. I think part of the CPS’s role is to look at the impact of the court backlog on the system as a whole, and jury trials are a part of that. A big part of the work of the CPS is in the court back office, in relation to other aspects of juries that create time pressures on the system: preparation of jury bundles, dealing with jury queries when people have been summoned, juror expenses, and so on. Having fewer jury trials in itself will help with that back office preparation and work, will it not?

Caroline Goodwin: With respect, often what happens is that counsel are told, “Please make sure that you know what’s going to be in the jury bundle.” That gets sent to counsel; counsel deals with that. Counsel is asked, “Can you make sure you can deal with the witness order?” Counsel produces that. All that you are having to do, basically, is either put material on a photocopier or put it into a media form so it can be played in court.

Having been a Crown prosecutor for 21 years, I find it very disturbing that you take that view.

Q As a former family solicitor, I want to focus my questions on the proposal to remove the presumption that involvement by a parent in a child’s life is in the child’s best interest or good for the child’s welfare. Given that, in children’s proceedings, it is already the law that the child’s welfare shall be paramount, and given that, sometimes, children can be used as tokens between warring parents, I wonder, Samantha Hillas, whether you find it strange that we are going to hear evidence today only from parent groups, and not from groups representing children’s interests. Is that odd to you, as it is to me, given that we are dealing with changes to children’s proceedings, where a child’s welfare is paramount?

Samantha Hillas: I have not made the arrangements for who is attending, so I do not find it odd. Whoever has been asked to attend is attending. I can talk a little bit about the repeal of the presumption—

Q Given that there is no one here representing children, as a children’s lawyer, can you help the Committee understand what a presumption of a parent’s involvement in a child’s life is, as compared with the overriding concern for a child’s welfare that must be uppermost in the court’s mind? Can you help the Committee understand what that means?

Samantha Hillas: I am not quite sure I understand the question, so I will answer it like this. From the practitioner perspective, we have always found the insertion of the presumption fairly odd, because it goes without saying that it is usually in children’s best interest to have a relationship with both parents. Where there are circumstances in which it is not safe for a child to have a relationship with both parents, the child’s welfare is protected and is paramount under section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989.

The insertion of section 1(2A) into that Act in 2014 came on the back of quite a lot of protest and demonstration by certain pressure groups for the amendment to be made, to try to promote a presumption of involvement that really is tacitly always there. For practitioners, it was probably something of an otiose insertion. The difficulty with it is that even though a review has demonstrated that it has not been the basis for judgments—the welfare principle has not been subordinate to it; the welfare principle has still been paramount—it has created a sort of pro contact culture.

You have to remember that when it came in, that coincided with basically the eradication of legal aid in family cases. Even though lawyers would advise that the welfare principle is paramount, if you are a litigant in person without the funds to afford legal fees, you might read that presumption and read a pro contact culture into it, and might then be agreeing to situations that are not safe for a child.

I have not answered your question, but—I am sorry that this is taking quite a long time—practitioners thought that it was a fairly redundant insertion, and it is sensible for it to be repealed.

Q My questions cannot be answered because there is no one here representing children’s groups, but that part of the Children Act 1989 is not about presumption of contact, is it? It is about presumption in favour of involvement in a child’s life.

Samantha Hillas: Yes. Well, there is a presumption that a child’s best interests would be served, as I said in the first place, by having a relationship with both parents. It is only where there would be a risk to that child that there would not be involvement.

But the Government want to remove that.

Q Thank you for coming today. My question is for Claire Davies. The open caseload is 80,000 and is projected by some potentially to rise to 200,000. In your evidence so far, you have not been able to identify a timeframe for the measures that you would prefer to be the focus at the moment. Do you think that victims would view that with concern, given that we have all agreed that justice delayed is justice denied?

Claire Davies: Of course they are going to view it with concern—it is common sense that anyone would be concerned—but we need to have the opportunity, which we have not been given, to demonstrate that in fact it will not reach that high with the measures that we support.

Efficiency in our system has long been lacking, despite repeated efforts, and this Government have shown that they will invest, and substantial investment is what is needed. We are not afraid of change—we make that absolutely clear. A lot more use could be made of technology in our courts; remote courtrooms could take the shorter hearings away from the trial courts so that they can concentrate on what they should be doing and have the full use of a court day to maximise that.

It is a combination of features in the trial, but the matters that we have proposed—you heard this morning, as well, that we encourage the use of specialised courts—would have a dramatic impact. You have to remember that new sentencing provisions came into force on 22 March, and we believe that they will also have a dramatic impact on the current caseload. The ability to give suspended sentences for a longer period of up to three years will have an impact, as will efficiency measures and, most importantly, the investment that the Government have made in relation to uncapped sitting days. All of that, combined, will have a dramatic impact, to the point that losing, or curtailing, the right to jury trial—because we are not losing it completely. We make that clear and accept it. We say that it is not necessary to lose the legitimacy that juries bring to our court system.

The judiciary have made great strides in their diversity, but they are still not representative of the communities they serve. The equalities statement makes clear the way that people elect those of different ethnic backgrounds. Given all of that combined, we would urge that clauses 1 to 7, which deal with repealing or restricting the right to a jury trial under certain circumstances, are not brought into force. There are many more ways in which action can be taken.

Q What is your comment on the fact that the Government are asking us to support and understand the estimates of Sir Brian Leveson based on his experience, and to accept modelling that is uncertain, but when you and thousands of others sign a letter criticising them, using that same experience to justify your views, we are told, “That’s not credible. Surely, you need to listen to Sir Brian.”

You have 30 seconds to respond.

Claire Davies: Frankly, the answer is that we are the ones who are in court day in, day out doing the job. With the greatest of respect to Sir Brian, he is not doing the job in the current day and age—we are.

Matt, do you have a quick question?

I will keep it quick. I think we all agree that victims are very brave, and we know that the delays are having a massive effect on them. I think we all agree, too, that the measures in the Bill will reduce timescales—

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witness Claire Throssell gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Claire Throssell. We have until 3.20 pm for this panel. Claire, will you briefly introduce yourself?

Claire Throssell: My name is Claire Throssell MBE, and I am a campaigner, an advocate, an author, an educator and an ambassador for two domestic abuse charities, Women’s Aid and IDAS. I am at the forefront of the child first campaign, and I am the one pushing for the repeal of presumption in the Bill.

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

On resuming—

Ordered,

That the Order of the Committee of 25 March 2026 be varied by as follows—

Leave out rows 22 to 29 of the table in paragraph (2), and insert—

“

”—(Sarah Sackman.)

Following the Divisions in the Chamber, the timings for this afternoon will be adjusted. I will announce at the start of each panel when the questioning will start and end. We already heard your introduction before the votes, Claire. If you do not mind, we will jump straight into the questions.

Q Thanks ever so much for coming, and for your patience with the parliamentary procedure. I know that these things are really challenging sometimes, so I want to thank you in advance for talking about difficult things. Also, rather than being dependent on what we may ask you, I want to give you the opportunity to lay out two or three points that you really want to get across to us today.

Claire Throssell: Thank you for the question, and I have four points that I really want to get across this afternoon. First, I want to make it clear that presumption has no place when it comes to children’s safety. Presumption has no place when it comes to children’s lives. Presumption has no place when it comes to our lives.

What happened to Jack and Paul was based on a series of presumptions under practice direction 12J, and you have to ask the question: why did a professional working for CAFCASS, after being barricaded in her office, presume that Jack and Paul were safe to go on a visit? Why did she presume that I was exaggerating, despite me telling her and a court—let us be clear that I did—that he was capable of killing? Why was it presumed that it was okay to ignore my voice? Why did they presume that two children would be safe when they had clear evidence in front of them that they would not be?

We are talking about presumption, and people say, “Yes, the practice direction is there in the Children Act 1989.” Let us be clear: there are 68 children who have died under that Act. There are 68 children who have died under practice direction 12J. I say again: presumption has no place when it comes to children’s safety.

I am going to show some evidence now, and I show these pictures not to shock or upset people, but to show the reality of presumption of contact. I would like to show you two photographs, the first of which shows Jack and Paul. They were never child A and child B in a serious case review. They are child 18 and child 19 in a Women’s Aid report that looked into how many children have died at the hands of known perpetrators of domestic abuse.

This 12-year old boy, Jack, died believing that he had saved the life of his younger brother, because I never told him differently—I held both my sons in my arms as they died. Jack’s voice was never heard; the day he was supposed to have his interview with CAFCASS was the day that he died in my arms. The only time this boy’s voice was heard was on a landing, when he spoke to a fireman and a doctor. Although he was dying, he used as much of his strength as he could to tell as many people in that property, “My dad did this, and he did it on purpose.” This was taken by the police as a dying testimony. Why did they not take his words in life? Why did they take his words in death?

This second photograph of Jack is again evidence of what happens with presumption of contact. The first photograph of Jack was taken in the July, and this second photograph shows Jack in the October. CAFCASS and a court presumed that this boy would be safe. Social services presumed that this boy would be safe. This boy died believing that he had saved the life of his brother, and more importantly, he thought of everybody else but himself. When people should have protected him, he went back for his brother. He gave his brother his hand. He gave his brother his strength. He was there for his brother, but who was there for him at 12 years old? Not the court that ordered contact because of the culture in the family courts that contact is in the best interests of the child—that they should see both parents.

Jack had nobody, and he thought about me—he made sure that everybody in the property knew that I was not to blame. As a parent, I am ashamed of that, because it was my role to protect them. Let us be clear that I have to live with the fact that they died only because a domestic abuser wanted to punish me. A family court allowed him to do that, but these two beautiful boys only lost their lives because of me.

When we talk about repealing presumption of contact, let us look at it: over 30 years, children have died. In 2014, Jack and Paul were child 18 and child 19. Let us face the fact that, in 2026, we are at 68 children. That is not good enough, because every child deserves to live. Every child deserves to have a childhood, and their childhood should not be allowed to be torn apart piece by piece by seeing a perpetrator of domestic abuse—by seeing a person who just wants to hurt them, humiliate them and punish an ex partner.

Children have one childhood. Children at risk of harm only have today; they do not have tomorrow. You have a chance—a lifesaving opportunity—right here, right now to make a difference to children’s lives, not just today, not just tomorrow, but for generations of children to come. It is no surprise that there are many people in their 20s with mental health issues. Mental health has never been as bad as it is right now in young people. And why is that? It is because they are made to see a parent who is hurting them. They are made to see a parent who is harming them. It might not be physical, and it might not be the ultimate act, like it was for Jack and Paul, but if a child comes back from a visit and they are different from how they were when they went on the visit, let us be clear: that is child abuse.

Children are supposed to have a voice. Children are supposed to have opinions. But all too often there are too many other voices in this complex system that are louder than the child. We hear about parental rights all the time, but around children’s rights there is a deafening silence. We have an Act that protects them: the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. They are supposed to be seen as victims in their own right, and yet, up and down our country, their rights are still being walked over—not only their rights under the Domestic Abuse Act, but their human rights too. They have the same rights as we do. They are people; they are humans; they are themselves. Their basic rights—to live, to thrive, to live in privacy, to live in peace—are being broken in courts up and down the country. That is not good enough. They are the future of this country, and if we get this wrong, what does the future of our country look like? What have we got for the future? They are not being allowed to live as they want to live. They are not being allowed to be free. They are certainly not allowed to thrive. If you go to school, college or university and you have suffered that morning, how are you going to learn? How is that conducive to achieving in life and being who you could be?

I used to tell the boys, “Be the best that you can be today.” They only had today. Right now, with this Bill repealing presumption of contact, we can give every child in this country the tomorrow that not just Jack and Paul, but 66 other children will never see. This issue is bigger than Jack and Paul, but they were my reality. They were my children. They were the better parts of me.

But 66 children are anonymous. Successive Governments have made them a child A or a child B in a serious case review, to gather dust in a file in Whitehall or around here, just brushed under the carpet. Serious case reviews—lessons must be learnt. I can ask everybody in here, “What lessons have we learnt?”, because every year we are losing more children, and we are losing more children because of practice direction 12J, because of presumption of contact. There should never be presumption—not in law, not when it comes to safety, not when it comes to lives. You would not go in a court and presume that somebody is guilty.

Thank you so much for that; thank you for sharing.

I know that these words will not necessarily shift your view, but I do not think anybody in this room would think that any of that was your fault, or that you should share any of the blame for what happened to your children. Your testimony is really powerful.

Thank you, Claire, for sharing such a powerful testimony. I think I first met you during a Westminster Hall debate, which was called by your tireless and fearless MP Marie Tidball, the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge. Your testimony is compelling and it is why we are bringing forward the provision in clause 17 of the Bill to repeal the presumption of parental contact. We know that will not protect every single child, but it does send quite an important message about what we in Parliament say, which is that the courts should always have at the forefront of their minds the best interests of the child, and that alone. I just want to say thank you.

Q Thank you, Claire. Can I just acknowledge that children who are yet to go through the family courts are safer because of you and your tireless campaigning over many years? I hope you can hold that close as you go on. I believe that all campaigners like you, who never fight for themselves, are fighting for the next generation—the job is never done. My question to you is: what is the next step? What would you like to see in legislation going forward, especially in our family courts, to protect more children from harm?

Claire Throssell: What I would like to see moving forward is an understanding of what it looks like without presumption of contact; what good practice looks like; understanding trauma; understanding what coercive control is; understanding emotional abuse. We all understand physical abuse—it is there; we see it. What we do not understand is the emotional abuse and the scars that we carry. We must always look from the position of actually seeing a child, hearing a child, believing a child, protecting a child, and we must go from this basis. We must use the legislation that we have in the Domestic Abuse Act. We know that it is not being used in courts. We must see children as victims in their own right of this crime. We must accept children as victims in their own right of this crime, and we must take away the fact that we are always trying to prove the crime that has been committed against us.

Domestic abuse is a crime, so why is it that when we go into family courts we are ripped apart by barristers? Why is it that a crime has been committed against us, but we are always the ones who have to prove it has been committed, and by whom? Why do we have to go into a court, when we have committed no crime, and stand up and be humiliated in order to fight for our children? Why do we have to do that alone?

With any other crime, the onus is on the police to prove that a crime has been committed and by whom, and then sentencing is carried out accordingly, but in a family court, the person who has had the crime committed against them time and again has to prove that that has happened. We are not believed automatically, and we are not supported automatically. There should be special measures in family courts to help see the child, like in the Pathfinder courts, but it is not just about seeing the child; it is about hearing them, believing them, supporting them, and letting perpetrators of abuse know that it will not be accepted and that we are going to take action, protect that child and always presume the unthinkable.

Q It is good to see you again, Claire. I echo everyone else’s comments about your very powerful evidence. You will remember that the last time you attended a debate in the Chamber, certain Opposition Members commented—we have heard comments and suggestions even today—that sometimes mistakes happen and both parents should have the right to their children at all times, but do you agree that this is an opportunity, and that the Government and, in fact, all parliamentarians should be doing everything we can to make sure that the 68 does not go to 69? I would rather that we make a mistake and the child survives than make a mistake where a child dies. Do you agree?

Claire Throssell: Absolutely—I agree with that 100%. It comes back to the fact that we must not presume that children are safe. We must not presume that children are not going to lose their lives, because perpetrators of abuse manipulate, they lie, they turn it around and they use DARVO—everything is always everybody else’s fault, and their voice is always louder than the child’s. You have an opportunity now to change that. You have the opportunity to make sure that no other child has to use their voice and say to a fireman, a police officer or a doctor, “My dad did this, and he did it on purpose.” No other boy should have to have a dying testimony and believe that he saved the life of his brother, because I never told him differently. Mistakes are not good enough. Sixty eight mistakes is a national disgrace, and in 2026, there should be no more.

Q Thank you so much, Claire; it has been really powerful to hear from you. I have heard from a constituent who has a close family member going through all of this, and she has been advised by solicitors to avoid the family court at all costs, describing the potential outcomes as a “lottery” and talking about very patchy training and understanding. Would you back my constituent up on those conclusions?

Claire Throssell: Yes, I do back that up. Judges do need training. They are hiding behind the fact that they are independent. They should be independent—they are the law of the land—but they should not be above the laws that they serve, and they do need training. They do need understanding. Like I say, the court is another arena; it is a secondary abuser. We go through the abuse, we take the courage to leave—that is not easy—and we enter a court system where we think, “This is going to be fair; this is going to be just.” We go into these arenas, and there are no guarantees that we can protect our children. We are ripped apart, and our personalities—we go through trauma. We tell people the same thing again and again, but we are not seen, heard, believed or supported.

Order. Thank you, Claire. I am sorry, but we have reached the end of the time allotted for your evidence. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. We really appreciate it and your campaigning.

Examination of Witness Doug Downey gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from Doug Downey. We have until 4.54 pm for this session. Thank you for joining us today. Will you please briefly introduce yourself?

Doug Downey: My name is Doug Downey. I am the Ontario attorney general. I have the privilege of overseeing the administration of justice in Ontario, Canada. I look forward to being able to talk with you a little about our experience with juries, and the lack of juries in certain cases, and how that relates to efficiencies and otherwise.

Wonderful. Thank you very much.

Q Hello, Mr Downey. I am Dr Kieran Mullan, the shadow Justice Minister. I want to begin by asking you about what read over we might get in relation to challenges you have had with court backlogs. Do you have experience of waiting times and backlogs that increased from an ordinary level and were brought back down again? What did you do to secure that?

Doug Downey: Absolutely. As we went into covid, we were developing backlogs, and then of course through covid we had more. I can share some specific numbers with you if you wish. For a sense of scale, we have about 250,000 cases a year that come into the system, and the backlog made that grow quite significantly. We are chunking our way through it, if I can put it that way, and employing technology processes and increasing capacity across the system.

Q Has there been any change over that period in the use of jury trials? Have you used them more or less?

Doug Downey: We have not made changes to the jury trials, but we have made changes to compensation for jurors and how we get responses from jurors electronically versus in paper, and we changed our jury rolls. But in terms of what juries apply to, we have not made changes during that period.

Q Would it be fair to say that you had an increase in the backlog and then a decrease, without making any changes to the extent of the use of jury trials?

Doug Downey: We have not used that as one of the levers. To give a sense of scale, about 96% of our trials are judge alone, so in terms of making a change, it would be to add more juries, which I would suggest, based on the data and experience we have, would move us in the wrong direction on the backlog.

Q We have covered jury trials and changes around that, but if you were going to pick one or two other things that you did that you think had the biggest impact on reducing your backlog, what would they be?

Doug Downey: Increasing capacity across the system. We have different levels of court: the Ontario court and the superior court. The Ontario court has a complement of approximately 300 judges. We have added 52 to that complement. In addition, when we add a judge, we add seven full time staff, whether it be Crown prosecutors, victim service workers or whatnot. In total, we added about 700 full time staff over that period. Building that capacity has helped. The challenge we have is the increasing rate of intake. There are theories on why that is, but it is a fact that we are dealing with.

Q It was very good to have the chance to meet not just you, Mr Downey, but many of the judges at the superior court of Ontario on my recent visit to Canada. I am glad that you are able to join us. I want to ask you about two things: the efficiency and the pace with which judge alone trials are conducted, as compared with jury trials, within your system, and your perceptions of the fairness and integrity of those judge alone trials. As you just explained in response to the shadow Minister, judge alone trials in the criminal court have been a feature of the Canadian system for decades, I understand.

Doug Downey: Absolutely. They have been in place for quite some time. They produce a number of benefits for the system. It is not just the length of trials; it is the expertise that can be brought to bear by an experienced judge. To become a judge, you have to have a minimum of 10 years’ experience at the Bar. It can also create scheduling advantages, because you do not have to schedule contiguously; you can have a break in a trial and come back a few days later, and not have to manage the jury in that sense. There are cost consequences, but there are also scheduling and efficiency consequences that we harness. More than 95% of our cases are judge alone, but there is a mechanism by which the individuals can choose judge or jury. We put that in the hands of the accused. By and large, they choose judge.

Q I am aware of that distinction. Distinguished academics such as Professor Hoyano have made the point about the distinction with the system that we are bringing forward, where we are removing the right to elect. I understand that in your system, it is the defendant who elects. It is right, is it not, that many defendants actually elect for judge alone?

Doug Downey: Absolutely true—they do elect for that. There are different advantages for them, including the speed of the matter. There are advantages for our system in terms of the cost of the matter and getting people to a just outcome. It is more than an academic exercise in terms of what is fair, but people do choose that. I can tell you that we track the court of appeal pieces, and more often the appeal is because a jury has been misinstructed. Judges, trained properly, when they come to the bench, can segregate out things that need to be segregated out, but you cannot always do that with a jury.

Q The point about the pace at which the trial moves is an issue of contention. Some people say that having judge alone for the same type of case will not save time compared with a jury trial. In your experience, once the election has been made by the defendant within the Canadian system, how much time is saved for the same sort of case with a judge alone trial as opposed to a full jury trial?

Doug Downey: At a minimum, months. There is no question but that it is faster, from the data and anecdotally. It is not just our jurisdiction; other jurisdictions in Canada have similar experiences; British Columbia, on our west coast, is a good example. There is absolutely no question. You can move through motions in the middle of trials without disrupting, and you can do preliminary hearings beforehand and not have to redo something in front of a jury, because the judge has already heard that part. There are systemic advantages for time.

Q Other Committee members want to come in, but I want to ask you about fairness and, importantly, the perceived fairness and confidence that communities have in the system. On my visit to Toronto, it struck me what a diverse city it is. I believe that 50% of the residents of greater Toronto were born outside Canada. Is that something that you measure? Can you help the Committee understand the confidence that the public has in judge alone trials?

Doug Downey: There are two parts to that. First, clearly, people are choosing judge alone. On its own, the fact that the accused are choosing judge alone speaks to the confidence they have in that system. There have been studies, such as the national justice survey in 2023 and 2025. Half the respondents to those studies indicated that they are moderately to very confident that our criminal justice system is fair to all people, and more than half—59%, to be exact—reported being moderately to very confident that the criminal justice system is accessible to all people. That is a fairly high number for people who are experiencing the system or know people who are experiencing the system.

Q Thank you, Mr Downey, for your time today. I profess my ignorance of the Canadian justice system—it will stay with me forever that I do not know exactly how it works. Is the lay element in your criminal courts just 5% of all criminal cases?

Doug Downey: Are you talking about the non lawyers who are hearing—

Yes.

Doug Downey: We have in the Ontario Court of Justice what we call a lay bench—the justices of the peace. They do a lot of the bail hearings and a lot of the provincial offences—traffic and that sort of thing. That is where the lay bench resides, but the trials are not done by the justices of the peace when it comes to criminal matters; they are done by judges who are appointed, with a minimum of 10 years’ experience and quite often more than that.

Q That is helpful. What sentence can a judge sitting alone give, and are there particular cases that will be heard with a jury?

Doug Downey: It is a great range. Let me answer that in reverse, if I may. The most significant matters, such as murder and treason, will default to a jury, but if the Crown agrees with the accused, they can move it to judge alone. That generally is not the case—it generally stays where it is—but they can. For the balance of matters, such as serious sexual assaults, it is not directly based on what the consequence might be; it is a class of cases that we call hybrid and I think you call either way cases, where an individual can make an election to move into the superior court and, by consequence, get a jury, but generally they do not do that.

Q I have a quick follow up question, based on your earlier comments. Do you believe that a large part of the confidence in the Canadian model is the right to elect?

Doug Downey: I think so. The right to elect is a feature, but I do not think there would be any less confidence if they were not given that right, simply because the default would probably be with jury, but that would become very inefficient for us.

Q My question concerns the potential issue of judges being identified and targeted because they are dealing with cases at a high level. Clearly, in your situation, judges are dealing with high level cases and sentences. Have you seen any evidence that judges are particularly targeted if they hand down higher sentences?

Doug Downey: I think we are seeing, around the world, a heightened level of concern about individuals taking things into their own hands, so court security is very important to me. Judicial security is something that we have put a lot of effort into.

As for whether it happens because of a sentence, I cannot say with confidence that that is the driver. I think our societies are becoming more vitriolic, and that is what we need to guard against in protecting individuals. But if an individual judge is presiding anyway, I am not sure that they are going to attract more attention as a result of whether or not there is a jury.

To be honest, the nice thing about judges is that we get written reasons why things happen. In Canada it is very different from the United States: the jurors are not allowed to be debriefed afterwards in a public way. I do not know whether that is the case in Britain, but that provides a little bit of anonymity and protection against people drawing attention to themselves.

Q In Canada, 96% of your criminal trials are without a jury. In this country, 97% of our criminal trials are without a jury. Would you support reducing the percentage of jury trials even more in Canada?

Doug Downey: It is a complicated piece in Canada, because the criminal code is governed by the federal Government. We are a provincial Government, so although I am tasked with running the Administration, I do not get to set all the rules. If I can be a politician for a second, I think that it is healthy that you are having this vigorous debate. I am certainly not comfortable telling you what you should do, but in our experience, from the perspective of running the system, it is definitely having a positive impact.

But would you support reducing the percentage even more in Canada?

Doug Downey: We have an anachronism here in Canada with civil juries, which you got rid of quite some time ago. I am supportive of dealing with those civil juries, largely for the same reason.

Q What about in the criminal context?

Doug Downey: In the criminal context, it is not something that we have broached. I would have to have that conversation with my federal counterpart.

Q I am interested in your data. Do you see any differences in different groups electing for a judge only trial? If you do see a difference—I am talking about age and various other protected characteristics—why do you think that there is one?

Doug Downey: That is a great question. I do not have data on the different groups electing, but we often see high profile matters trying to move towards a jury. We know that individuals with very technical defences or very technical legal approaches will sometimes go to a judge, so that they can have that expressed. It really depends on the facts of the case, as opposed to the kind of case. I do not have running data on that, so I hesitate to be categorical. The motivation for going to jury, or not, can change with the theory of the case, the approach of the lawyer and, ultimately, the client.

We have two minutes left.

Q Good afternoon, Doug. I have a really quick question. I am just going to be brutally honest. I am a woman of colour—a black woman. Within our communities in the UK, there is a fear that if we move towards a judge only trial, it would create major problems. How has the Canadian system ensured that defendants from such diversity are receiving a fair hearing in judge only trials?

Doug Downey: Again, that is a wonderful question. One of the dynamics is cultural sensitivity. Whether a jury can be walked through what they are dealing with, with the proper lenses, is open for debate. I can tell you that we have a lot of effort going into judicial education, by the judges for the judges, on First Nations perspectives, with everything from body language to lived experience. That knowledge resides with the judge; it may or may not reside with the community of peers. That is the goal. That issue can go both ways, but we have some confidence that judges are exposed to things that juries may not be.

Mr Downey, thank you very much for joining us today from Canada.

Doug Downey: It was such a pleasure. Thank you.

That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions.

Examination of Witness Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett gave evidence.

Q We will now hear oral evidence from Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett. We have until 5.09 pm. Thank you so much for joining us today. Will you briefly introduce yourself to the Committee?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I am Sacha Hatchett. I am chief constable of Lancashire constabulary, but I am also the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for criminal justice. Thank you for giving the opportunity to come today.

I am sure you have questions to ask me, but if you do not mind, I have taken the liberty of preparing a few points that I thought would be helpful to you. We were asked about the backlog in the system and why the measures may be needed. I thought it would be worth giving a bit of context, in part about how policing adds to the problem—

Sorry, but can I ask how long it will take? It is just that we have very little time.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Two minutes.

Perfect.

Chief Constable Hatchett: It is about the context of the problem and the impact of court delays felt by policing. Clearly, you are very well sighted on the increase in Crown court volumes, which means that in some areas cases are being listed into 2030. It also means that we are seeing an increase in victim and witness attrition rates. The number of cases in which suspects are charged is also going up, so policing is putting more into the system. We are charging more and we have more evidence, improved technology and proactive policing. We have also had more police investment over the years. The fact that we are charging more is helping to put the system under some strain.

In terms of the impact on policing, there are three areas. Our victim care units are the people who support witnesses and victims and keep them updated post charge but prior to the hearing. They are the people who deal cases when they are adjourned. They deal with the emotions of victims and witnesses, and they do a fantastic job. The number that they are having to manage in that sphere has gone up significantly since 2019-20. They are also seeing the impact of the fact that some third party agencies—independent domestic violence advisers and independent sexual violence advisers—are inundated with supporting victims. If those agencies cannot do that, some of the emotional support is falling to the victim care units—

Thank you very much. We have only 15 minutes for this session, so I would like to go into our questions now, but hopefully we will cover the other points you want to make.

Q Hello. I am the shadow Minister. With witnesses such as you, I think it is important to be really clear about the areas about which you can and cannot comment. Does that make sense?

Chief Constable Hatchett: Yes.

Would I be correct in saying that it should not be inferred from anything you say today about the issues that need to be addressed, the challenges that victims are experiencing and the challenges in policing that you support, for example, a reduction in jury trials? The National Police Chiefs’ Council does not have any views on that.

Chief Constable Hatchett: No, we do not.

Q Thank you. Are there particular parts of the process that you have observed and want to raise? Police officers often attend court and are often witnesses. In your experience, what are the processes that fall down? What makes you sit there shaking your head and wishing it had not happened? What prevents you from getting a conviction secured or a court hearing brought forward?

Chief Constable Hatchett: Obviously, there are the adjournments and the upset to victims and witnesses, including police witnesses. I just want to make the point that for the whole time the adjournments are taking place—you are sometimes looking to 2030—the risk in the community is being managed by policing. Whether the person has a tag or is on court bail, with or without conditions, they are being managed in the community by policing.

Q Let me move away from the court to policing, which obviously is the area that you are most familiar with. What one or two things could policing do better, or be allowed to do differently, to enable you to shorten the timeframe on your side of a victim’s journey?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I am really conscious that the Bill takes it from the point of charge and into the court system. We are working with the Crown Prosecution Service and in policing to see how we can decrease the time from the point of the recording of the crime to when we actually get a charge. There are initiatives going on with the Crown Prosecution Service, so maybe more will come into policing for charging. Some work is being done on redaction and on rebuttable presumption disclosure. There are a number of pilots going on to see how we can streamline the system to make that part as short as possible, recognising that no matter what we do there—and there is complexity in policing in terms of the investigations, the digital forensics and the third party evidence that all adds to the delay—once there is a charge, there is a challenge in how you get through the process as quickly as possible, so that we do not have victims and witnesses who are not prepared to give evidence because of delays.

Q It would be helpful for the Committee to understand the impact that the delays, which I think we all agree are intolerable, are having on policing generally. If you could speak to some of your first hand experience of that, it would be helpful.

Chief Constable Hatchett: I talked briefly about the witness care units, which have had an increasing demand placed upon them since 2019-20. There are two other areas. There is greater demand on investigators. We are managing a growing number of caseloads for an extended period of time. If you think about the requirement of the prosecution team, we are obliged to continually review evidence, so the longer it takes to go through the court process, the more reviews are required. That requires rework. That also could mean changes to the officer on the case or the prosecutor, which then asks for additional work. From an investigation perspective, there is an impact on policing.

The management of risk in the community also falls to police, as I mentioned. You will have individuals who are remanded by police. They are remanded into the court process; a proportion of them will be then taken to prison, so they will be managed within the prison estate. However, the vast majority of the individuals will not go into the prison system. They will either be on conditional or unconditional bail. A proportion of them—about 9,500—are on a court tag. That means that they would have gone into the prison system if not for the fact that they had tags with conditions associated with them. Then, if there are breaches in relation to the tags or the conditional bail, that adds on to policing, which is then expected to manage those individuals, arrest them and take them back into the court process.

It is not just the investigations, and it is not just the victim care side of things; it is the management of risk in the community. We sometimes do that with risk assessments, and we do it with multi agency public protection arrangements and multi agency working, but there is still that risk, and we are managing that risk for longer.

Q The independent review of the criminal courts referred to the genesis of the crisis that we are in. It has been driven by covid and cuts to spending and investment, but another driver that Sir Brian Leveson and his team have pointed out, which may explain why trials for the same sorts of case are taking twice as long now as they did 20 years ago, is the complexity of the evidence. We all carry around a smartphone now. From a policing point of view, can you give us an idea of how that affects policing work?

Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. Because we carry around a phone and we have computers, laptops and a whole host of other electronic items, the investment in digital forensics for policing has been exponential. The types of offence that digital enabled crime allows for are prioritised. You would expect child abuse cases and so on to get the priority because of the risk, including offenders’ risk to other children, but all forces across England and Wales have had to put significant investment into digital forensics.

Q Coupled with the procedural safeguards—things like the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and what have you, which we all think are a good thing—that driver of demand is not going away. Unlike covid, which thankfully has dissipated, it is now a permanent feature of our criminal justice system, I take it.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. We sometimes get better at what we do with it and I suppose the innovations become better, which may enable us to interrogate devices quicker. We hope that will come in time and we invest in the technology to do that, but the reality is that we live in a digital age. That goes across the board for us all.

Q Thank you for being here. Your police officers are at the coalface. They often experience these adjournments and see victims let down at the final hurdle when they are about to have their day in court. What is your assessment of why cases are so often adjourned in our Crown courts?

Chief Constable Hatchett: I think there are multiple reasons. There are people who are far better qualified to give you evidence on that; undoubtedly you will have spoken to defence lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service, who can probably give you some really good evidence.

There are a whole host of reasons why cases are adjourned. Sometimes it is evidence, sometimes it is witnesses and victims, sometimes it is disclosure, sometimes it is court time—the reasons are multiple, but ultimately victims and witnesses are suffering as a consequence. My witness care units then have to pick up the conversations with those victims and witnesses to prepare them, hoping to keep them on board and confident enough in the criminal justice system to give evidence at a future date.

Q Thank you for being here, Chief Constable. Before I ask my question, I should declare that I worked as a serving officer for three police forces across the country.

Chief Constable Hatchett: Respect.

Thank you, and thank you for your service. My question is about the morale and mental health of police officers, as you might expect. It is not to the same level as victims, but with the inevitable delays is there a risk of retraumatising the police officers who have to look at evidence of the most heinous crimes years down the line and give statements at each court case? Is there a risk that police officers’ mental health is being affected as well?

Chief Constable Hatchett: Police officers are particularly challenged with the caseloads. Not only are you are dealing with the cases that you are investigating that day, but you have the cases that are in the system that need reinvestigation and rework. Caseload work is challenging and tough for some of our officers. Lots of work is being done on the wellbeing of officers, in terms of trauma and the types of case that they deal with, and on how police forces can get better. Forces are working with lots of people to make sure that the support is there for police officers.

It is not an easy job. You know that it is not an easy job. Day in, day out, we deal with people in crisis. Our focus has to be on victims and on keeping people safer from harm. That is absolutely where our officers are, but the caseload and the work that is generated by delays in the system do affect our officers.

We have one minute left.

Q Thank you for being here. You have already looked at the impact that delays are having on officers, including the impact of managing a larger caseload. How are officers managing the sense that victims feel that they are exposed for such a long time before their case gets to trial? I imagine that the management work that you need to do is quite difficult. How are you dealing with it?

Chief Constable Hatchett: A lot of it falls to the witness care units. Those are the individuals who are at the sharp end, dealing with victims and witnesses, trying to keep them on board. They do a phenomenal job, and they do it under really difficult circumstances. Every officer investigates, particularly in the serious cases—

Order. I am sorry to interrupt you, but that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you very much for your evidence.

Examination of Witness Daniel Flury gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. We will have until 5.24 pm. Will you please briefly introduce yourself to the Committee?

Daniel Flury: I am Daniel Flury. I am the operations director in His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, and I am also the senior responsible officer in HMCTS for the implementation of the outcomes of the Leveson reports.

Q Similarly to the question that I asked of the chief constable, it is important that we understand the constraints on your evidence. This is stated Government policy; would I be correct in saying that it is not within your remit to criticise or say that the stated Government policy was wrong?

Daniel Flury: It is not within my remit, no.

Q So we cannot take anything you say as being objective on the overall question of whether or not we should do this policy—you have to support the policy. In terms of the modelling, you will have seen in Brian Leveson’s report that he frequently refers to his assumptions being estimates, and to the Department’s need to do further detailed modelling. Could you point us to the further detailed modelling that the Department undertook in response to those requests from Sir Brian? Where is that further detailed modelling that the Department undertook?

Daniel Flury: That modelling is not undertaken by HMCTS. It is undertaken by the Ministry of Justice, and there are analytical teams. We produce projections and assessments on a routine basis—things like projections around the Crown court caseload, prison populations and so on. The findings and outcomes of the Leveson reports, and whatever happens with the Bill, will be factored into those projections, which are updated on a six monthly basis, in terms of caseload projections, and are routinely shared with Ministers, and occasionally published.

Q We are talking about the forward looking modelling. For example, as you said, you have the data for what we do now and how we do it. But we are proposing reforms. If we wanted to say that a judge would do the consideration and summing up of evidence and the writing up of his thoughts on why he came to a decision, there is no evidence within our system for how long that might take?

Daniel Flury: No—we have obviously never operated in this way, or this potential way, before. As all projects and programmes do, we are currently relying on assumptions. I know that teams have tested these assumptions with a whole variety of people who work in the criminal justice system—judges and so on—but they still are assumptions.

Q Do you think that the Institute for Government’s classification of some of those assumptions as highly uncertain would be a fair classification?

Daniel Flury: I would not like to comment on that. The analysis is primarily undertaken by the Ministry of Justice; I am here representing the courts service and the operational side.

Q Okay. This question is more directly about your role. If you were to draw up a list for the Minister of the top five things that you thought would make a big impact on the delays that you are experiencing at HMCTS, what would be the top two, and where would structural reform of the courts, a new court bench, and removal of the right to elect sit on that list?

Daniel Flury: The top two things are uncapped sitting days, and long term certainty over sitting days. That is what we have been provided with in HMCTS. But as I am sure the Committee has heard, on the current projections, even sitting at uncapped levels and having certainty over three years is not enough to reverse the Crown and magistrates’ caseload. We need something else if we are to arrest the growth in caseload.

Q As you picked two things that have been agreed, what things that have not been agreed would be on your list of further things that would help?

Daniel Flury: On the principal sources of delay, you have mentioned the police and the effectiveness of trials, and we see lots of ineffective trials because of an absence of an advocate—an advocate is engaged in a case elsewhere. The situation with the Prison Escort and Custody Services—the delivery vans—is well known, and well documented in the Leveson report. Finding a way to improve that is pretty near the top of the list.

Q You have given two, which is great. Would you agree that neither of those has anything to do with jury trials?

Daniel Flury: Yes.

Q Thank you for being here, Mr Flury. You have clearly mentioned that certainty on uncapped sitting days is hugely valuable to the system. You have mentioned a number of the areas where efficiencies, as I understand, are being made and developed with HMCTS, including prisoner transfer and better case co ordination. We know that there are also plans to introduce blitz courts from 1 April. Would you care to expand on any of that to explain how HMCTS is gearing up and getting ready to deliver greater efficiencies in the system, so that it can bring down the backlog?

Daniel Flury: I can, but may I begin by saying a bit about why certainty is so important for the courts, in particular? We go through this annual round—what we call the concordat process—where we discuss with the MOJ and the judiciary the amount of funding that HMCTS gets. That has been an annual process, so we operate on an annual cycle.

Now that we have certainty over three years, it means quite a considerable amount to us. It means that we can confidently list over the next three years, so we can say to recorders whom we are trying to book now, “Look, this case is going to get on, and this date is going to be sat. We have the money to do this.” Having that certainty to book Crown court recorders and to recruit both staff and judges is a really important step for us.

I will come back to the question about the other things that we are doing to improve efficiency. We are about to roll out case co ordinators, which is another recommendation in the Leveson report. These are people in the Crown court who will actively manage the case, and who will be able to make decisions on behalf of the judge using delegated powers. They will really corral the system together to drive efficiency and drive readiness in a case.

There is a whole variety of what we call blitz courts, which I would almost describe as a bet on the system. We try to brigade a number of cases that we know will either plead guilty or be discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Under the direction of the judges, we list those cases, knowing that they will be disposed of there and then. This essentially brings those cases forward on the hope and expectation—we use data to establish what could plead out—that it will give us an opportunity to clear them from the caseload. The product of that is not only reducing the caseload but indicating to the system, particularly the defendants, that their case is not going to languish for three or four years in places like London. It means that it will come on, and they have a far greater incentive to plead guilty knowing that the trial is a bit more proximate.

Q You have mentioned a number of ways in which HMCTS is pursuing greater efficiencies in the Crown court. Can you share with the Committee the work that HMCTS is doing with regard to growing capacity in the magistrates court? One of the effects of these reforms, if they make their way through Parliament, will be that some cases that would have gone to the Crown court will be diverted to the magistrates court. One question I have been asked in Parliament is about the important role that legal advisers play. Can you explain what HMCTS is doing to ensure that we maintain efficiency and grow capacity in the magistrates court?

Daniel Flury: One of our biggest challenges in this whole programme is the need to expand operations in the magistrates court, particularly the numbers of legal advisers and magistrates we have. We expect to recruit 100 additional legal advisers every year for the next three years, and the critical thing for us is to make them stay and retain them—we have seen lots of our legal advisers go off to local authorities or the CPS. We are working closely with our trade unions at the moment on potentially improving their pay to improve retention, and we are devising development schemes, so we are hopefully going to offer pupillage to our barrister legal advisers.

We are also supporting them in court. For example, we have recently developed a pilot using AI, where you take a case summary—what is called an IDPC pack, or initial details of the prosecution case—and it essentially summarises that case for the legal adviser. It tells them what the relevant points of law are and what the facts are in the case. These are ways in which we are both improving the efficiency of the magistrates court and improving the working conditions of legal advisers, because they really are critical if we are going to expand the magistrates court in this way.

Q To return to something you said in answer to the shadow Minister, how effective do you think the prisoner escort and custody service is?

Daniel Flury: I think we all agree that there is room for improvement. We have had lots of testimony, certainly from Crown courts, about late starts and subsequent late finishes. That obviously affects not only the hearing but our staff, who have longer working days. I think we are all seized of the importance of driving improvements—there is now a ministerial board, which HMCTS sits on, to work with the prisoner service to improve the service we get. The service itself will be retendered in the next couple of years, and we hope improvements will arise from that, but it is certainly a factor in court output, and certainly in late sittings and late starts, particularly in the London Crown courts.

Q Do you think that doing away with jury trials will help that at all?

Daniel Flury: Not really, no.

Q And you do agree that defendant non arrival is a cause of delays and of the backlog.

Daniel Flury: It is certainly a cause of delays. As I said, it causes late starts and late finishes. This is why we over list cases in both the Crown court and the magistrates court—to fill those gaps where they arise, but it is certainly a factor in the effectiveness and efficiency of the court day.

Q To pick up on Paul’s point about over listing and capacity, looking at the Bill from an operational perspective, what one aspect of it would you say would make a material difference in reducing the capacity problem you have identified—over listing and overcapacity making it difficult with staffing numbers?

Daniel Flury: The consequences of the Bill for the Crown court, other than the jury trial element, will be relatively small. It will not really affect its day to day workings; there will just be a portion of cases that will be heard without a jury. In terms of the processes in the Crown court—how it operates and how judges list—we are not expecting profound changes at all. As I said, the real change arising from the Bill is the expansion of the magistrates court, and the real challenge for us in HMCTS is the need to recruit legal advisers and magistrates to expand the court and make its operations more efficient.

Q Looking at these plans coming forward, do you have what you might call a risk register within the Department? Do you have a system for rating the different elements and how risky you think they will be to deliver?

Daniel Flury: As I said, to deliver the components of this Bill and its changes to jury trials, a number of relatively minor IT changes are needed. We need to change—

Q Sorry to interrupt you, but I just want to get to the specifics of the question. I guess what I want to ask you is what you think is really important about the magistrates element, and how you are currently risk rating your ability to deliver it. Is there a low probability that you will be able to deliver it without issues, or a high probability? How are you risk rating that programme?

Daniel Flury: Our biggest risks around this programme are retaining legal advisers and recruiting magistrates. We need 7,000 magistrates over the next three years and 100 more legal advisers each year. We have mitigations in place, especially on magistrates.

Q But how are you currently rating them? Thank you for telling me what the risks are, but do you think you have a low risk of failure to deliver, or a high risk?

Daniel Flury: It is a medium risk.

Thank you.

Linsey, did you have a very quick question? You have seconds.

Is it not the case that magistrates courts can be more agile in terms of court listing and picking up cases, like we heard from the Canadian—

Order. Sorry, but that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you very much for your evidence.

Ordered, That the Order of the Committee of 25 March 2026, as amended, be varied by as follows— Leave out rows 28 to end and insert— “

Examination of Witnesses Sir Richard Henriques, Clement Goldstone and Lord Burnett of Maldon gave evidence.

We will now hear from Sir Richard Henriques, His Honour Clement Goldstone KC and Lord Burnett of Maldon. We have until 5.59 pm for this panel. Thank you all very much. Could you briefly introduce yourself for the record?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I am Ian Burnett, Lord Burnett of Maldon. I was Lord Chief Justice until October 2023.

Sir Richard Henriques: I am Richard Henriques, a retired High Court judge. I was called to the Bar in 1968.

Clement Goldstone: I am Clement Goldstone. I was a resident judge and the recorder of Liverpool until 2019.

Q My opening question for all three of you is this: what are the best and most positive features of jury trials, and how and why do we use them in our system?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Public involvement.

Sir Richard Henriques: I do not disagree with that, but it is also the fact that the world at large is able to observe justice and what is going on. In the present context, they will be extremely unhappy.

Clement Goldstone: I agree and have nothing to add.

Q Very good. I want to pick up on your experience in Liverpool. I am sure you are familiar with this, and it has been discussed in Parliament, but the Liverpool Crown court does not have a backlog—it sees cases within the time limits. Based on your experience there, how were you able to achieve that, what else might the wider system learn from it, and what things can we not learn as they are not replicable?

Clement Goldstone: First, every Crown court has a backlog—they need one to function. Why was Liverpool a success? It was a success, first of all, because it is an excellent single court centre; secondly, because it has a very positive interactive relationship between the bench and the Bar and the Bar and the bench; and thirdly, because the staff are always willing to go the extra mile, which is probably because of the way they interact with the judiciary.

The fourth reason, which I know is something inherited by my successor, is that, as recorder, I believed that if you want to bring out the best in people you give them responsibility. Everybody wants to be part of a success story, as Liverpool in that way was. What has happened over the last seven years since I retired is that the same standards have been maintained—albeit, it must be said, in much more difficult and trying circumstances than when I was in the position.

Q The first example you have given is structural and not replicable across the whole country, but the other points you have made are all things we could support and implement more widely than just Liverpool.

Clement Goldstone: There needs to be a cultural change.

Q Lord Burnett, when, as Lord Chief Justice, you were considering how to improve the efficiency of the service and the experience of victims, did you ever consider reductions to the jury element of trials? If you did, what were your conclusions?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I have spoken publicly on many occasions about my personal belief that there is a need to rebalance the work between magistrates courts and Crown courts. I was aware of the detailed work done 25 years ago by Sir Robin Auld. He made certain proposals which, even then, although I was not a criminal barrister at the Bar, I took an interest and many of them struck me as being quite sensible.

During covid, I had detailed discussions with the then Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert Buckland, about adjusting the way we did trials, because it seemed to me that it was not a sensible approach to assume that covid would be over within weeks or a few months, which is what most people were doing, I’m afraid. Robert Buckland floated the idea of trying either way cases in the Crown court with a judge and two magistrates—something I personally have favoured for a long time—but it did not fly politically; I think that is the best way of putting it.

Q You talk about a judge and two magistrates as something you favoured, and that is what Sir Brian recommended, but it is not what the Government are proposing. They are proposing a judge sitting on their own. Can you see any disadvantages to that proposal versus the one that you supported?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Again, the Government well know my view on this—I see the Minister nodding. It seems to me that if one is going to reduce the involvement of the general public, as members of a jury, in the relatively low level cases that go to the Crown court, maintaining public involvement through the magistracy is a good course to follow. It also has the great advantage of simply replicating a constitution and jurisdiction that exists in the Crown court at the moment. When there is an appeal from the magistrates court against conviction or sentence, including an appeal against conviction in an either way case, it is heard in the Crown court by a judge and two magistrates. They take very little time. Both Sir Richard and Judge Goldstone are much more experienced, over many more years, in what happens in the Crown court than I can pretend to be, but those cases take very little time and the judge, on behalf of the court, gives an immediate judgment, just as in the Crown court generally the judge gives an immediate summing up. That struck me as being a much better course.

I will come back to you if I get time.

Q I would like to ask questions of the panel in relation to the practicality of what is being proposed, but also the principle. This is a question for all of you. Do you accept that in our system pragmatism has always determined which prosecutions are heard with a jury and which are determined by judges or magistrates?

Sir Richard Henriques: Not much pragmatism as gravity, I think. The more serious cases will remain, pursuant to Sir Brian’s review, with juries. I heard the question “Are you trying to do away with juries?” earlier this afternoon. It is critical that the public do not think that we are doing away with juries. What is happening is a matter of pragmatism, as you say. Something has to change. The backlog has gone from 17,400 cases exactly six years ago to 80,000 now, and cases are being listed for four or five years’ time. Something has to be done. For my part, I agree with Lord Burnett: I would have preferred a judge and two magistrates. But something has to be done, and if judge alone is the only option, I am 100% in favour of it. I have no doubt that it will work and that it will save far more time than the Bar contends it will save. It will save a lot of time.

Q That is the point that I want to alight on. Lord Burnett, you were part of the Times crime and justice commission, which produced its report in 2025. The state of play now is even more dire, but you reached a similar conclusion: that the status quo is not something that we can continue to live with, and that courts without juries, whatever the composition—judge alone or judge sitting with two magistrates—could bring about swifter justice. Does that remain your view, Lord Burnett?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Yes, it certainly is my view. To be perfectly blunt, I am rather astonished by some of what I have been reading from people who I do not think are necessarily focusing on the evidence of what happens.

I do not know whether the Committee is hearing from any magistrates or from district judges who sit in the magistrates court and the youth court, but they will tell you that either way cases in the magistrates court and the youth court—of course, the youth court also does indictable offences—very rarely go beyond half a day. In the Crown court—Judge Goldstone will, I hope, be able to give you more detail—very few cases take less than a day and a half. That is not only because of the time and motion calculable time that having a jury involves, but because the way that advocates conduct cases in front of professional courts is completely different from the way they conduct cases in front of juries. It is much quicker, and a professional court can get the advocates to focus on the real issues, whereas in the Crown court the judge cannot interfere. I am convinced that the time saving will be enormous if the relatively low level cases are tried by a new constitution. The same savings clearly would not be made in a 10-day or 15-day trial but that is, I think, not what we are looking at.

No, that is not what is in the Bill. Mr Goldstone, I noticed you were nodding. Do you want to come in?

Clement Goldstone: I had the advantage of listening with interest to the three circuit leaders straight after lunch today. They will probably never speak to me again, but I have to say that I did not recognise the validity of the argument that time would not be saved.

Time will be saved in a number of ways. First, a lot of defendants who would otherwise have been tried by a jury and taken their chance will be far more realistic and take whatever credit is going if they know that they are going to be dealt with by a new division, whether it is one or three. Secondly, in my experience it is wrong to confine the savings, or the assessment of the savings, to empanelling and swearing in a jury. That is where it begins.

Every sex case, I suspect probably nationally, now comes before the court with a direction that there will be no witnesses before 2.15 pm on the first day or, if the case is starting at 2.15 pm, until 10.30 the following morning. If there is no jury, there is no bar to the evidence starting within 10 or 15 minutes, because if there is to be an opening at all, it can be very brief—and I mean very brief. Half a day, at least, will be saved on every sex case that is heard in the Crown court. That is before you start with time lost as a result of jury sickness, or a juror being delayed because his train has been cancelled or her bus was delayed. It is also easier to call a witness out of order if you are not trying to take a jury through in the order in which the evidence would otherwise be called. You do not need to worry about engaging with counsel to ensure that they stick to and get to the point. They will realise that they will not be playing to the gallery as, with the best will in the world, we have all been inclined to do in the past when we have had a jury to try to convince, particularly if we have a bad case.

I also do not accept that there will be additional time spent in the writing of judgments. The vast majority of decisions will follow the conclusion of the defence speech: ex tempore judgments in the overwhelming majority of cases or, in those very rare cases where something needs to be put into detailed construction, a verdict followed by a decision in writing, before sentence if there has been a conviction, within the next seven days if there has been an acquittal. There may be plenty of reasons why the restriction on the right to jury trial is not a good idea, but to suggest that time will not be saved is, in my view, not one of them.

Q Thank you all for being here. Mr Goldstone, Liverpool is often held as a bastion of good practice in the criminal justice system, but Sir Brian Leveson said this morning that we should not necessarily use it as an example because of the very unique set up there. Do you agree with Sir Brian’s assessment that Liverpool’s set up cannot be emulated in other places across the country?

Clement Goldstone: I think that many of the efficiencies that Liverpool has created can be replicated across the country, because many efficiencies stem from positive leadership and proactive engagement. In a way, it is much more difficult to achieve those efficiencies with a larger court centre than with a centre where there are only two judges. There really is a limit to what you can do if you are running a two judge court, but in the larger courts I believe that there is far more room for efficiency than is perhaps readily assumed.

Q Thank you; that is helpful. This is a question for all of you: what risks do you perceive arising from the proposed removal of the automatic right to appeal from the magistrates to the Crown? Do you believe that this right of appeal is currently being abused?

Sir Richard Henriques: I see no evidence at all that it is being abused. Sir Brian thinks that there should be an application for leave to appeal, as there is between the Crown court and the Court of Appeal. It is finely balanced, in my view.

With respect to the perfectly good question, I think we need to look at the bigger picture here. Sir Brian’s work is phenomenal—if anyone apart from Lord Burnett has read every word of it, they have done extremely well—but it would conceivably create more communications and more work, and it would not necessarily achieve a great deal, as I think that only 2% of cases are appealed. While it is a very interesting dilemma, I have not given it a huge amount of thought myself.

Lord Burnett, would you say the same?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I was going to make the observation that Sir Richard just made about the very low level of appeals from the magistrates court to the Crown court, which is something of a tribute to our magistracy. It really is a very low level, so I do not personally see this as a big problem.

You asked about risk; one of the reasons why the current system exists is that the magistrates court is not a court of record and transcripts of what has gone on in the magistrates court are not readily available. If there were to be an appeal of the sort that is contemplated in this legislation, my understanding is that there needs to be quite a lot of work to put the nuts and bolts in place in the magistrates court. Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I had not understood that it was expected that this could be put into place immediately. It is more a tidying up measure, as I see it, that accompanies issues that are really much more important.

Clement Goldstone: In principle, I am in favour of controlling the right of appeal to the Crown court. When I was in Liverpool—it is not that long ago—we were sitting one or sometimes two judges on Thursdays and Fridays on appeals. For some unknown reason, there seemed to be a lot dangerous dogs in Liverpool, so there were a lot of dangerous dog appeals.

More seriously, I do not think the right is abused, because it is there to be utilised, but I do believe that there is an argument for weeding out a lot of hopeless appeals. Also, you must bear in mind that if there is an appeal based on a wish to call fresh evidence, particularly perhaps bearing in mind that a defendant in the magistrates court was not represented, that is something that would have to be carefully considered, so I would not reject it as a good idea, because it could result in time savings, but it is something that has to be counselled with caution.

Q You said that your preference would be for two magistrates and a judge to sit together, and I understand your views on that. There are already examples in our criminal justice system of where a judge sits alone in the magistrates court. We have district judges, which I am old enough to remember as stipendiary magistrates. I am not aware of any big campaigns or calls for them to be abolished. They deal with the most serious cases in the magistrates court, or tend to. Are you aware of any campaign to get rid of them because of unfairness or otherwise?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: District judges (magistrates’ court), formerly stipendiary magistrates, have been a feature of our system since the mid-19th century—I cannot remember precisely which year they were introduced. I have never been aware of any reasoned criticism of the way in which they conduct cases. On the contrary, the rate of appeal that Sir Richard referred to includes cases that have been tried by district judges and deputy district judges. It is a phenomenon that we are used to in the criminal justice system.

Q On the practicalities of jury trials, you talked about the time savings of having judge only trials over jury trials. I want to talk about other potential savings in terms of the backlog generally through jury trials. Personally, I think that a judge only trial would make listing more agile. If a witness becomes ill, the judge could sit in a few days’ time, whereas a jury trial might be aborted and have to go back into the court list. What is the impact of those sorts of features on the court list more generally, rather than on the time saving in a particular trial in that moment?

Clement Goldstone: It would give the opportunity to a judge who was in the middle of a judge alone or judge with magistrates trial to say, “We will have to break off because this witness is ill,” to use your example, or, “because the defendant is ill,” and that would enable him to start another trial. At the moment, in the Crown court, where there is a judge and a jury, when a witness is ill, very often there is an abortive trial. If a witness does not turn up and the witness cannot be found, a decision has to be taken whether to go on or to give a little limited time for the witness to be found. Therefore, one of the other savings of time that will follow is that there will be no retrials and no juries to discharge, for whatever reason.

I know that is not a direct answer to your question, but it is another by product of restricting the right to trial by jury to the cases that are envisaged. There is, of course, a catch all for the cases in which the public interest requires a trial by jury, even if conviction merits a sentence of less than three years.

Q So potentially there would be less repetitive listing of the same trial over and over again through those issues.

Clement Goldstone: You would have one trial listed once, hopefully.

Q My last question is about the allocation process. In previous debates, we have heard concern that the judge’s allocation decision about whether it is the Crown court bench division or a jury trial would be a very long process. There would be a lot of work and a lot of written submissions, and it would take the judge a long time to make those decisions. That mirrors the process of the decisions that magistrates make every day, which, in my experience, often take three or four minutes to decide. The system would essentially require a defence advocate to argue for a higher sentence if they are pushing for a jury trial. Does that strike you as an unusual argument for a defence barrister to be making? Do you think the allocation process could actually be quite efficient?

Lord Burnett of Maldon: I have read some of these arguments, and I have been slightly surprised by them. I cannot help the old advocate in me thinking that lawyers are terribly good at finding nine reasons why you should not do something. We all did that; that is what lawyers are sometimes asked to do. I think this one will very much depend upon the procedures that are put in place for dealing with it.

Obviously, if you are going to create a new decision that has to be made, there will need to be adjustments to the practice direction and probably the criminal procedure rules, and I am not sure that detail has been thought through yet. If it has, I am not aware of it. I imagine that most of these decisions would be done on the papers. It strikes me as rather extravagant to suppose that you list it for half an hour for argument to deal with something like that, so I think that one is a bit of a bogeyman.

Sir Richard Henriques: Paper applications seem to me to be fairly obvious.

Clement Goldstone: Judges in the Crown court are very good at paper applications. They are used to them.

Q We all agree that the backlog is too great. Lord Burnett, in The Guardian this week retired Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Alan Moses argued that we could cut the backlog by a third in six months if we employed retired judges to winnow the current backlog. Do you agree? [Interruption.] Richard clearly does not.

Lord Burnett of Maldon: It is a very good journalistic article.

He is not a journalist, though; he is a retired Lord Justice of Appeal.

Lord Burnett of Maldon: Let me give you a sense of how we had to deal with this when we got through covid. There was by then a backlog of 60,000 cases in the Crown court—it is 80,000 now, and it is going up. Critically, the proportion of cases not dealt with within six months and a year was growing, and that continues to grow. We tried to bring to bear every possible judicial resource to sit as many days as we could, because the Government of the day removed the cap on sitting days.

I authorised to sit in retirement pretty well anybody who wanted to come in and help. We changed the system so that magistrates court district judges could sit in the Crown court; we got a cohort of those in. We allowed recorders to sit in retirement, effectively, to enhance the numbers. We did enhance the numbers, but—with the greatest of respect to Sir Alan, whom of course I know extremely well—to suggest that you can solve this problem by the click of a finger is just not right. People have been trying to solve the problems of backlogs and inefficiencies in the criminal courts for pretty well as long as there have been criminal courts. I really can assure you that if there were any simple answer it would have been found long ago.

I set up something called the Crown Court Improvement Group, now the Criminal Court Improvement Group, which does fantastic work in bringing together all the players in the system to improve efficiency, and they are doing so, but those looking at a system from the outside, when they do not live in it—with the greatest of respect to those elsewhere who do that—and think that there are simple answers, are just not right. I would be putting myself in that position if I tried to tell the Royal Navy how to make sure that its ships worked and got around the world. People think they know the answers, but until they live and understand the system in detail, that is not how it works.

Q Mr Goldstone, given the efficiencies you see in doing away with juries in this number of cases— Clement Goldstone: You are using that phrase again.

I am, because you are doing away with them in certain cases. Given the efficiencies, can you remind me why juries are a good thing in any case?

Clement Goldstone: We have already dealt with that. That was the very first question.

I would like to hear your view.

Clement Goldstone: Because of the involvement of the public and the right of the person to be tried by his or her peers—but something has to give. We are in a situation where something has to change. In fact, a lot of things have to change, because the restriction on the right to jury trial will not work alone, and let nobody think that it will. Someone used the expression, “It’s not a pick and mix”; it is part of a much bigger picture. On the point that you suggested, which Sir Alan Moses had raised, not a Crown court centre in the country of any substance does not already have in existence precisely that procedure of trying to force into the list those cases that have any prospect of—for want of a better phrase—cracking, whether by way of the prosecution offering no evidence or by way of the defendant pleading guilty.

Q Sir Richard, you spoke of the importance of correcting the misconception that some have that we are scrapping, or doing away with, jury trials in the round, per se. Do you agree that another misconception or myth that needs to be challenged is that there is an ultimate right to a trial by jury? I ask you to comment on the House of Lords Library note citing Anthony Arlidge and Lord Judge writing about such myths: “It”—Magna Carta, that is— “did not immediately give us trial by jury, although when jury trial did evolve it came to be regarded as based on the Charter’s guarantee of trial by one’s peers. It did not offer sweeping statements about personal freedoms or human rights or fair trials and, in fact, for the most part did not establish general rights, but rather created or recognised privileges.”

Therefore, as we debate this matter, we ought to bear those points in mind. Do you agree?

Sir Richard Henriques: I agree with those observations without reservation. I think I speak for all of us present: given no backlog, we would not be here at all. We are concerned about this being shameful—a word I used in The Times, I think, in March 2020, and it was shameful then. On trial by jury, I have spent my whole professional life in the presence of juries, save in the very early days—

Order. That brings us to the end of the time to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, thank you.

Examination of Witnesses Fiona Rutherford, Emma Torr and Cassia Rowland gave evidence.

We will now hear oral evidence from JUSTICE, APPEAL and the Institute for Government. We have until 6.29 pm for this evidence session. Thank you for attending today, and for waiting. Can the witnesses briefly introduce themselves for the record?

Fiona Rutherford: I am Fiona Rutherford. I am the chief executive of JUSTICE, the UK’s law reform and human rights charity.

Emma Torr: I am Emma Torr. I am a barrister and the co director of the charity APPEAL, the Centre for Criminal Appeals, which represents people who have been convicted of a criminal offence in England and Wales.

Cassia Rowland: I am Cassia Rowland. I am a senior researcher and criminal justice specialist at the Institute for Government.

Q Thanks very much for coming. I want to start with some questions for Fiona and Emma. Am I right in thinking that you were both signatories to the letter from what we might call the violence against women and girls grouping to the Deputy Prime Minister, which said that we should not move forward with these proposals? Is that correct?

Emma Torr: Correct.

Q I do not know whether you heard the evidence this morning in which the Victims’ Commissioner characterised that letter as predominantly being on behalf of women and girls who end up as defendants. When I read a specific part of the letter that said, “Well, actually, it’s also about victims,” the Victims’ Commissioner said that I was unfairly representing the letter. I wanted to give you both an opportunity to talk about whether, when you put your name to that letter, you included women and girls as victims as part of your considerations.

Fiona Rutherford: I certainly did. I cannot speak on behalf of the other organisations, but certainly from my behalf, that is exactly my understanding.

Emma Torr: I would agree with that.

Q I want to ask you something else; I do not mean to put you on the spot, but this is in the public domain. You might know that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) has said publicly online that he understands that some of the organisations that put their name to the letter, or wanted to put their name to the letter, were put under pressure by either officials, Ministers or advisers at the Department not to do so, or to withdraw their names. Are you familiar with any of that? Have you heard anything about that in any way, shape or form?

Fiona Rutherford: We have not participated in any of the conversations that may well have happened with or without Ministers or officials.

Emma Torr: Not within my knowledge at all, no.

Q Moving on to the substance of what you say in the letter, can you tell us a couple of the points that you think are most important in relation to why—although I am sure you really care, as we all do, about the issue of backlogs and the experience it is creating for victims—you feel that the reforms on restricting the right to elect, creating a new bench division and reducing the use of jury trials are not the right way forward?

Fiona Rutherford: We have already heard from Daniel Flury in relation to the way that the magistrates courts are simply not structurally set up in many different ways. We know that magistrates typically undertake 13 sitting days on average. They also receive only three weeks’ training. If we are talking about moving into a situation where the sentencing powers are going to get far higher, that is of significant concern.

We all hope that there will be recruitment of magistrates, bearing in mind they have been cut by over 50% in the last 15,16 or 20 years. We know if the recruitment that is being talked about is successful, those people will be highly inexperienced, whether they are the legal advisers or the magistrates who are making decisions themselves.

To counter what I think was by said by the previous panel, of the appeals that come from the magistrates court to the Crown court when there is a concern about conviction or sentence, 40%—nearly half—are overturned when it is to do with an appeal against conviction, and 47% are overturned when it is an appeal against a sentence. There is a question mark about the accuracy of the way in which magistrates are making decisions.

We have heard about diversity among magistrates, and it is true that magistrates are more diverse than the judiciary, both in terms of gender and age. However, socioeconomically, there is a big gap for both the judiciary and magistracy. When looking at, for example, the number of applications to become a magistrate, only 3% of those people who applied are from manual labour jobs, which of course, again, will not be commensurate or replicative of the people who are going through the system.

You have already covered unrepresented defendants. That will only increase in relation to the existing legal aid issues. It will fundamentally mean that the defendants in those positions—particularly with very difficult cases—could be cross examining their victims. If there is no lawyer to put that barrier in the way, then I can only imagine that the impact on those victims will be tremendous, particularly in very difficult cases.

We have talked about minorities and disproportionality. There was a fantastic question from the Committee earlier. We know that there is greater confidence among the public, particularly minority communities, in jury fairness over and above anything else. The Deputy Prime Minister has already written this down and has found that out from his own research. Racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system is and will continue to be a problem if we do not continue to try to work through that and keep juries as the clearest and fairest way of doing that.

Emma Torr: The proposal to reduce the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court has been presented as part of a package of measures to reduce the backlog in the criminal courts; however, removing the automatic right of appeal will introduce a multi step process, which will only increase the workload of both the magistrates and Crown courts. To give a very brief outline of how it works at the moment, the defendant or the solicitor can fill out a very simple form, which results in a quick rehearing at the Crown court. As we heard from the previous panel, that works very well. It takes a couple of hours at most and even less for sentence appeals.

What the Government are proposing in the Bill is a multi layered process. That involves consideration of grounds of appeal, articulation of those grounds in an application, consideration of that application by a Crown court judge—with or without a hearing—followed by a potential remittal to the magistrates court if there is to be a rehearing if leave is granted. That will add to the workload of not only the courts but criminal solicitors who work under legal aid and are chronically underfunded and overstretched in capacity.

One important thing to consider when talking specifically about the right of appeal from the magistrates courts is that the Law Commission very carefully considered this in its 700-page consultation paper last year and took views from a number of different stakeholders. Its independent analysis was that the removal of the automatic right to appeal will increase the workload of the magistrates court and the Crown court.

Q I have a question for Cassia from the Institute for Government. Thank you very much for the work you have been doing on this. You have been quoted left, right and centre in Parliament. You produced an initial report and then a second one. Your second report was characterised in Parliament, for example by the hon. Member for Gloucester, as moving away from your previous criticism and that you now accept the Government’s model and think that what the Government have said is accurate. Do you accept the Government’s modelling and think what they have said about what will be achieved is now accurate, fair and reasonable?

Cassia Rowland: The approach that the MOJ has taken in thinking about the modelling totally makes sense and is very similar to what we did. I want to make it really clear that our numbers are the same in our first and second reports. We are looking at the numbers in a slightly different way from the MOJ. The 19% overall saving in the Crown court is specifically for the Crown court. Our figure that is a 10% to 13% saving takes into account the increase in demand in magistrates courts as well. That is a big part of the difference. I just wanted to clarify that.

Q Is it accurate to say that you reject the Government’s central assertion about the time saving?

Cassia Rowland: There are a lot of uncertainties behind the modelling. Some of that is inevitable because we do not have the information available. In particular, the bulk of the savings come from moving cases into the magistrates courts, rather than from the bench division, the judge only trial element, and there are quite substantial questions as to how feasible it is to move that many cases into magistrates courts if the Bill passes and as to the amount of time that those cases might take once they are in magistrates courts.

Great. Thank you very much; I appreciate that.

Q I, too, have questions for the IfG and I agree—thank you very much for both your reports, which are incredibly helpful. As you have just acknowledged and as you acknowledge on page 2 of your supplementary report, there is actually a good deal of consensus both on the merits and soundness of the approach, which we in Government had externally quality assured based on the available data. I think you would accept, as we do, that some of the behavioural changes likely to flow from a reformed system are, as Sir Brian himself said earlier in evidence, quite difficult to model because they are not currently in place.

Cassia Rowland: That is absolutely true. We do not know what is likely to happen on plea rates or dropped cases. A lot of cases are dropped at the moment, partly because of the length of delays. The modelling makes certain assumptions about how that might change, but there is a lot of uncertainty there. There is definitely uncertainty in both directions, but what we do not and cannot really capture in modelling in the short to medium term is the effect of the reforms themselves and the disruption that that potentially creates in the system, in the form of short term productivity and performance problems.

Q You have proposed that thesis, and I will come to that in a moment. You make the point about the disruption that might be caused by bringing in changes, but you also make the assumption that productivity levels can be restored to 2016 levels; that is what we want to get back to. But of course, as we heard from earlier witnesses from the Bar, quite a lot has changed since 2016. In particular, there is something that you alight on—I think that is really useful—which is what has happened to the workforce. We heard that a quarter of publicly funded silks have dropped out of the profession. We know that in other strands of the Bar the attrition rate has been even higher. Indeed, on page 5 of your report, you tell us: “The shortage of criminal lawyers is a crucial source of productivity problems in the criminal courts…with 4%”— this is more than 1,000 cases— “of all scheduled crown court trials in 2024 rescheduled on the day because the prosecution or defence lawyer was absent.”

For what it is worth, I agree with that analysis—it is really helpful. However, even with the massive investment that the Government are making, in both criminal pupillages and legal aid, it is not realistic to suppose that we can address that workforce shortage in anything other than years. It takes years to train a barrister; it takes years to recruit lots of judges, does it not?

Cassia Rowland: indicated assent.

Q Do you agree with me, on that major productivity driver that we need to address, that it will take years before we see that productivity gain?

Cassia Rowland: It does need to be a long term programme. There are some things that you can do in the short term, and we have already seen that. Just in the last couple of years, there has been an increase in publicly funded criminal barristers receiving legal aid income and so on.

Q But not in anything like the numbers that we would need to address this issue.

Cassia Rowland: No, it is not what you would need, but you also have to take it into account that there are risks on the other side with some of these proposals, which would reduce the amount of publicly funded work existing in the system. Potentially you could lose people from the criminal Bar. There is the risk of making things worse, so you do also have to balance that.

Q There is no disagreement between us on the fact that we need to drive greater productivity and we want to get back to a higher target. I think where the disagreement comes is on the air of realism as to how long that will take. I think that in your original report you assumed that an 18% productivity gain could be achieved overnight. We simply do not assume that. We think that it is years away, because of the workforce. In the meantime the backlog continues to go up. The conclusion of the independent review of the criminal courts is that investment, productivity gains and reform are the only ways we get the backlog down. Do you agree that productivity and investment alone will not bring down the backlog?

Cassia Rowland: I do not think I necessarily agree with that. It will take time but, respectfully, the proposals in this Bill will also take years. There are measures that you can do on the productivity side that will be faster than some of the measures contained in the Bill. A case co ordinator role, for instance, is really fantastic; we are very strongly supportive of that.

Thank you.

Cassia Rowland: We are always banging the drum for more back office and admin staff at the IfG. I worry that some of these reform programmes will move productivity in the wrong direction, in a way that may counteract the benefits of the structural reforms.

Q I do not want to hog the microphone, but I want to understand something about APPEAL and JUSTICE. We have had quite a lot of engagement, particularly with JUSTICE—there was a suggestion that there was no engagement with JUSTICE, or that we could tell you what to think about anything. I think you have been to a number of roundtables in the MOJ, and we have met a number of times. Just to check, you are not an organisation that interacts or provides services directly to victims, are you?

Fiona Rutherford: We do not do that, no.

Q Is the same thing true for APPEAL?

Emma Torr: Yes, but you have to understand that if you—

Yes, you do provide services to victims.

Emma Torr: We provide services to individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. You could classify people like Andrew Malkinson and Peter Sullivan as victims, because they have suffered horrendous miscarriages of justice, so in that sense we do.

I would not disagree with that for one second.

Q Thank you all for being here. It is very helpful to have your views as part of today’s evidence gathering. Do any of you share concerns that there is a lower level of legal aid available in the magistrates court, and that that could have an impact when magistrates hear cases that carry higher sentences?

Fiona Rutherford: Yes, and I referred earlier to the impact of having more litigants in person, which would be the impact of there being fewer lawyers representing defendants in the magistrates court. If you are looking at it from a victim’s perspective, one of the key things is that you will get the cross examination directly from the defendant in court. Equally, there are some issues with the way that appeals will take place. At the moment, as Emma has said, there is a reliance on the lawyers to really lead the way with those appeals—that is possibly why only 1% of appeals go from the magistrates to the Crown court.

Without a lawyer being present, and of course without there even being the right to appeal directly, you are leaving a whole load of defendants, who may well be wrongly convicted or may get the wrong sentence for the crime they have committed, floundering. From what we know, either about the legislation or the policy that sits around it, I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward. There are a number of ramifications of legal aid being an issue in the magistrates court, or of there not being enough legal aid.

Q Thank you. I have a question for Emma about appeals. Excuse my ignorance, but my understanding is that, if you are appealing from a magistrates court, you already have to have grounds for appeal anyway. You cannot just say, “Well, I didn’t like that; I’d like to appeal and go up to the Crown court.” There is already a threshold that has to be met—is that correct?

Emma Torr: There is a simple form where you have to set out your reasons for appealing, but there is no judge in the Crown court looking at that form and saying, “You’re not entitled to an appeal because you haven’t set out the reasons why you want to appeal.” It is an automatic right to a full rehearing in the Crown court. That is so important, because that automatic right acts as an essential counterbalance. We have heard about swift and speedy justice in the magistrates court. It is often rough and ready; we are talking about cases being tried by lay justices, some of whom may be experienced but some may not be, and we are also talking about less experienced judges. You often find in the lower court, the magistrates court, that advocates are more inexperienced and tend to be at the start of their career. The more experienced they are, the more serious the cases they deal with. What I am trying to say is that to have rough and ready justice dealt with quickly, the magistrates court requires that automatic right to redress any mistakes that might have happened. Let me put it this way: the automatic right of appeal is the ying to the magistrates’ yang, in the sense that you have an important safeguard against the miscarriages that do happen.

It is worth pointing out that the Magistrates’ Association, in its response to the Law Commission’s consultation paper, agreed with retaining the automatic right of appeal on the basis that justice may occasionally result in rough edges and potential errors in the magistrates court. In its view, the automatic right of appeal operates as a crucial safeguard, and that is essentially what we are saying.

Q I have a quick question for Cassia. The Government proposals rely on the magistrates court taking on a significant amount of additional work and, importantly, sentencing powers. Have the Government adequately outlined how that will be mitigated in the magistrates courts? What assessment have you made about how much quicker they will be able to hear cases compared with the Crown court?

Cassia Rowland: We have not done an in depth assessment of that. If by mitigation you are thinking about the justice fairness outcome, we have been principally focused on the ability of the courts to cope with this, but there is, as Emma mentioned, an acceptance that summary justice is rapid justice and it can be a bit rough around the edges. There needs to be a clear eyed assessment of the trade off you are potentially making between swifter justice by hearing more cases in magistrates courts and more robust justice in the Crown court.

Q I have one more question. Has the IfG ever done any modelling around the efficiency savings that could be made by introducing the RASSO courts, as per as the Labour manifesto, or by other reforms to the criminal justice system, such as introducing am and pm sitting days?

Cassia Rowland: We have not. Regarding the specialist RASSO courts, the principal arguments for those are about not efficiency, but the experience of the victim and the more trauma informed and wraparound approach that that kind of set up would allow for.

Q Emma and Fiona, my questions are directed at you, and I will bring them together, even though they are on slightly different subjects. Emma, I am glad you raised the case of Andrew Malkinson, which was obviously a shocking miscarriage of justice. It is important to note that he had a jury trial at the Crown court, and there was a right to appeal. There is a process that needs to be followed to go to the Court of Appeal, where somebody considers the grounds and whether a person has that right. I assume that it is not APPEAL’s position to removal of that process.

Earlier, we heard evidence from victims who supported the change to the right to appeal against a magistrates court decision to include a review from a judge, on the basis that a number of victims drop out of the process because they fear being retraumatised by a system that is not designed to support them. How do you balance that with your position that there needs to be checks and balances? Do you not agree that, by having a judge look at it, we are not refusing a right of appeal but merely qualifying it first?

Fiona, JUSTICE has said that the magistrates are ill equipped to enable the reforms, and you have made that point again today, but the Magistrates’ Association, which is not here to give evidence today, has said that magistrates are ready and willing to play their part. Why does your assessment differ from that of the magistrates themselves?

Fiona Rutherford: We already know that the numbers are not where they need to be, given the number of magistrates required to do the huge amount of work that would be placed into their hands. Equally, we have not heard yet —maybe there are plans on this—how magistrates will be better trained to be able to cope with the greater complexity of cases that they will necessarily hear. I have talked about the disproportionality of magistrates in terms of socioeconomic grouping; that is absolutely critical when it comes to public trust. There is a final point, but it has escaped me, so I will let Emma come in on this and I might come back to you.

Emma Torr: That was a good question, on which I would like to make two points. The case of Andrew Malkinson is a good example to consider when talking about these changes. Of course, there was a victim in that case, who was certain that the right person had gone to prison, but we know that Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for something that he did not do. When he appealed at the time, a judge looked at his appeal at the Court of Appeal; twice he went to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and twice his case was turned down. That is an example of where a judge has looked at the appeal, but would not give him—

Q Should we remove it at the Court of Appeal stage as well? Is that APPEAL’s position?

Emma Torr: No, that is not APPEAL’s position.

Q If that was the case for Andrew, why not? You are making the point that this would create unfairness, but you have just said that there is unfairness at the Court of Appeal stage, so why is it not your position to remove it at that stage as well?

Emma Torr: We are dealing with two different sets of processes. You are talking about the magistrates court, where there is more risk of miscarriages of justice happening by the very nature of the system—by who is hearing and who is presenting the case, as I said before. But perhaps the most important thing in magistrates court is unrepresented defendants. Around 50% of people in magistrates court do not have access to legal advice, either for their trial or to help them with their appeal, so it is important that you have the automatic right to appeal.

Q In a case where somebody makes that appeal and says, “I was not advised and there was evidence that was not considered. I think there was a miscarriage of justice here,” are you saying that you have no faith that our Crown court judges would deal with that? We are not saying that a person cannot appeal, but there would be a check on that, for cases where they have no legitimate grounds—I am sure that you see such cases. We are introducing a transcript of the magistrates court as well, so that people can understand the decisions. Would that not lead to an informed process? Do you have no faith in the Crown court judges to make that decision?

Emma Torr: It is not about faith in the Crown court judges. APPEAL receives hundreds of letters from people asking for our assistance. In the majority of those cases, they cannot necessarily articulate, in their letter or communications to us, what has gone wrong. They might be concerned about things that have happened during the trial process, but they cannot articulate what could amount to grounds of appeal. It takes a lot of care by us to look at the case, understand what has gone wrong and analyse it before we can decide whether we can draw out grounds of appeal.

You would be asking judges to do exactly that; not just to read the application and dismiss it because they have not been able to identify compelling grounds of appeal. Will the judge look at the digital case system, will they review evidence of witnesses or will they simply look at a short transcript? A lot of care needs to go into that analysis to formulate what could be compelling grounds, and giving that job to Crown court judges will increase the workload.

That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you all for your evidence.

Examination of Witness Tim Crosland gave evidence.

We will now hear evidence from Plan B. We have until 6.44 pm for this panel. Could you please briefly introduce yourself for the record?

Tim Crosland: Good afternoon, I am Tim Crosland. I was previously a Government lawyer, working mainly on criminal justice issues. I am now at the climate justice charity Plan B, and I also helped establish the civil liberties movement Defend Our Juries in 2023. That was before this Bill was born, but in anticipation that it would not be long before legislation like this came along that threatened to remove trial by jury from protest cases.

Q Thank you, Tim. I am Kieran Mullan, the shadow Justice Minister. To pick up on your final remark, what was it that made you think this issue could be coming down the track?

Tim Crosland: There had been a pattern of jury acquittals in protest cases. In April 2021, the Shell six, who had spray painted “Shell Lies” on Shell headquarters, were acquitted by a jury. In January 2022, the Colston four, who toppled the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour, were acquitted by a jury. In November 2022, members of Palestine Action, who had defaced Elbit Systems—suppliers of drones to the Israel Defence Forces—were acquitted by a jury. In January 2023, members of Insulate Britain were acquitted by a jury for blocking roads. It goes on, and we were seeing the reaction to that. It was nothing to do with the efficiency of the courts; it was the reactions from companies like Shell and Elbit, the meetings with Ministers, and the call, “How do we stop this happening because this is deeply embarrassing?”

Q To be frank with you, I was unhappy with the acquittals in all the cases that you have given examples of, so I am not necessarily sympathetic to the aim that you are putting forward. How important do you think it is that the system allows someone like me to be frustrated and not agree with what the jury end up doing or with what the judges and the establishment might think is right, versus what ordinary members of the public do, as a check and balance against people like me?

Tim Crosland: It is a vital component of democracy. The classic example that comes up a lot is Clive Ponting. This is going back few decades—I remember it. In the 1980s, he was a civil servant who heard an account of what happened to the General Belgrano being presented to the public and Parliament that he knew was not true. He knew that the Belgrano was driving away from the British forces when it was sunk, so he leaked that information and was prosecuted for breach of the Official Secrets Act. The judge said, “You have no defence in law.” If it was down to the judge, Clive Ponting would have been convicted as a criminal and jailed.

The jury saw somebody who had acted to get good information to the public, so they disregarded the judge’s ruling—a principle known as jury equity—and Clive Ponting was acquitted. That sent a powerful message to politicians about the standards that the public expect: standards of honesty and integrity. If we do away with the principle of jury equity, we do away with a vital democratic safeguard.

Q To pick up on what you said—“do away with”—I think you will agree that we are talking about not the removal of jury trials, but a significant and historically unprecedented reduction in their use.

Tim Crosland: What I said was do away with jury equity. Jury equity—the principle that a jury can acquit a defendant irrespective of the directions of the judge—only applies to cases where people are unlikely to receive a sentence of more than three years. It applies to cases of conscience where people have acted in the public interest, at least in their own self understanding, and that is what they want to present to the jury. Those people are very unlikely to get long sentences of beyond three years imprisonment. In reality, this measure will do away with the principle of jury equity altogether.

We have a quick declaration before the Minister comes in.

I want to declare that, as Crown prosecutor, I was assigned to the team that looked at the Insulate Britain campaign and reviewed the evidence as to whether charges should be brought. I want to make that clear and put it out in the open.

Tim Crosland: Thank you.

Q I want to be clear about the scope of this argument. Obviously, the least serious cases that take place in the context of public order would never get to the Crown anyway, because they could be heard within the magistrates—is that right?

Tim Crosland: Increasingly they are getting to the Crown court, because of this and the previous Government’s crackdown on protests. We had the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; there is now a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for any act that interferes with the rights of anybody in any way. We are now getting more protest cases coming to the Crown court, and more than 200 people have been jailed in the last few years for peaceful acts of protest. But of those 200 people, only one has been jailed for more than three years. A number of people have been jailed for precisely three years—the threshold in this legislation—but only one for more than four years. Almost any judge would be able to say that it is incredibly unlikely that you will get a sentence of more than three years imprisonment—therefore, no jury.

Q One of the examples you gave was the Elbit case. The indictment there was an indictable only offence. There were multiple charges, but the case contained an indictable only offence, so it would have received a jury trial under our reformed system anyway. I took the liberty to check: in the case that you cited, there would have been a jury trial under our reformed system, would there not?

Tim Crosland: You mean in the Official Secrets Act case?

In the one that you cited.

Tim Crosland: In the Ponting case?

No, not in the Ponting case. In the recent Elbit case.

Tim Crosland: No, these were criminal damage cases.

Q It was not purely criminal damage. There were indictable only offences. That particular case would have still received a jury trial.

Tim Crosland: There have been a number of these cases. Mainly, they are either way, because they are usually criminal damage cases. The case now—as it remains, because there is a retrial—is criminal damage, and these are either way cases. On the tests as set out in the Bill, mainly—and we have a lot of evidence of this—a judge would say that this would be less than three years, because it is mostly spray paint and relatively low level damage. We have seen cases of high level damage too, but it is never more than three years.

Q But the point is that low level damage would receive a magistrates trial anyway. What I am talking about is the scope between us. We are talking about a threshold change applicable to a relatively narrow group of cases, which is intended in part to address the backlogs. Those are not just backlogs in terms of delays in our courts; they also impact on the remand population, which is something that I know you will be concerned about. The amount of time that people are remanded in jail, including for crimes that they did not commit, is another aspect of this when we are talking about addressing the backlogs. Is that something that concerns you?

Tim Crosland: Of course it is, but the proposition here is neutral to the wider argument about addressing the backlog. It is about a very niche number of cases where people have taken action to expose Government or corporate wrongdoing. The impact of this proposal is that they would no longer be tried by a cross section of their peers; they would be tried by someone who, ultimately, is paid by the state, where we all know what the outcome will be, because judges in those trials have directed juries, as far as they possibly can, that there is no defence.

Most of these acquittals have involved a jury going, “Hang on a second. I’ve listened to the evidence over a week or two, and I’m satisfied that these people took action because they were desperate and felt that there was no option for getting the truth into the public domain to counter the disinformation of”—for example—“the fossil fuel companies.” Those jury acquittals then send an important signal to politicians that when the public actually get good information—let’s say about the nature of the climate emergency—they are shocked at Government inaction. Those acquittals are meaningful in a profound way, and we will not have them any more. It will just be guilty, guilty, guilty.

Q On your point about challenge, I do not think anyone in this room would dispute the importance of the right to protest. There is a difference where that breaks the law. The Government are fierce defenders of the independence of our judiciary, which often finds against the Government. That may be uncomfortable and we may disagree, but we have to take it on the chin. I do not doubt for one second the fierce independence of our judiciary. You said that we should make an exception for a niche group of cases but, fundamentally, what is the difference between someone who has broken the law—public order laws or otherwise—and a working class defendant from a marginalised community? Why should they be treated any differently under our criminal justice system?

Tim Crosland: I think that is a good question—

It is a good question. Can you answer it?

Tim Crosland: I want to talk particularly about cases where people are saying—like Clive Ponting and many activists did—that the motivation for taking the action is that what the state is doing is insufficient to protect the public. That is a fundamentally different situation. Look at the Colston situation: who better to decide whether that action crossed a threshold than a cross section of Bristol residents, who would understand better than anybody in this room the impact of that statue on that community? That would not happen any more; it would be a paid judge deciding. In my submission, it is precisely those cases where a jury trial is a democratic imperative and where you would lose something really profound.

To answer your question, I would not wish to say that other people should not have a jury trial. I am not saying that at all; I am just making a particular argument for these cases.

Q I have a very simple question: what are the risks of ignoring campaigners like you when we talk about fundamentally changing the way we do jury trials?

Tim Crosland: The risk is to democracy and to people’s confidence in democracy in cases that explore the boundaries between public interest, the right to protest and criminal law. We lose the essence of democratic rights if people know that they will not get a trial before their peers. It is a very profound danger. It was only in 2024 after 69-year old retired social worker Trudi Warner had been arrested and prosecuted for holding up a sign outside London Crown court that the High Court said that juries were entitled to acquit as a matter of conscience. Her case came before the High Court, which dismissed the Government’s prosecution of her and said that jury equity is a vital principle of our democracy and she was right to uphold it. It was part of her convention rights. We lose that principle if we ignore protesters when we look at this legislation.

Thank you. We have one minute.

Q A quick question: building on the Minister’s questions, where would you draw the line on this? You mentioned the criminal damage cases, and I can understand your argument there, but theft is an either way offence. Let us say that somebody nicks a bottle of whisky from Tesco and says, “Actually, I’m protesting against the excessive profits of the supermarket giants.” Does that fall into the narrow set of cases you were talking about? Do they not expand out?

You have 30 seconds to respond.

Tim Crosland: We have this in the civil courts. Jury trials in the civil courts are reserved only for cases such as malicious prosecution or unlawful imprisonment—

Q We only have 30 seconds. Where would you draw the line? If someone says, “I’ve stolen a bottle of whisky to protest against Tesco,” would they be included in the cases you are talking about?

Tim Crosland: If they argued that they acted in the public interest, then potentially, yes, but drawing that line—

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, thank you very much for your evidence.

Examination of Witness Sarah Sackman gave evidence.

We will now hear evidence from the Ministry of Justice. We have until 7.04 pm for this panel. Could the Minister introduce herself for the record?

Sarah Sackman: I am Sarah Sackman MP, and I am the Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services.

Q I want to start with a question that I raised with some of the earlier witnesses. It has been suggested that the Ministry in some way, through civil servants, Ministers or advisers—I do not know who—placed pressure on groups that were either signatories of the letter against the Government’s proposals or were persuaded not to be. Can you confirm that in no way at all did anybody connected with Ministry of Justice seek to exert any influence on those signatories, either to withdraw from the letter or not to sign it in the first place?

Sarah Sackman: We are having, including today, an incredibly open and robust debate on an issue of real national importance. We have had robust debate in the Chamber and we have heard from witnesses with very different perspectives, some of whom are clearly against these proposals—I welcome their contribution to the debate— and some who favour them. There is clearly a spectrum of opinion, and I welcome that debate; I have never shied away from it. Over the last year, on behalf of the MOJ, I have personally engaged with stakeholders, including—this is probably the most engagement I have had—with people and groups that oppose the measures we are bringing forward. They include the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association, for example, with which I have good relationships, although we disagree quite significantly on these proposals.

In respect of the letter, which was signed by 70 groups, all of those groups can speak for themselves. In advance of the letter being published, engagement took place with those groups to hear them out. Many of them maintained their objections, particularly Rights of Women, which led the objection. But it was important to have that engagement and dialogue on where there were areas of consensus and where we could work together. I would never—you heard the exchange I had with JUSTICE—put pressure on anybody to withdraw their objection. If people have objections, those objections need to be heard. There needs to be constructive engagement, and we have sought to have that in this debate. I think that people would agree that that is what has taken place.

Q Okay, thank you for confirming what you did personally. But obviously other people would have been meeting these groups, so can you clearly answer this question: did anybody from the Ministry of Justice do or say anything that these groups might have reasonably said was putting pressure on them not to sign the letter?

Sarah Sackman: Look, I genuinely cannot state every conversation that was had, because I do not know. What I can say is that a number of the groups who led the letter, Rights of Women—I hope it will not mind me saying—being one of them, attended a meeting with myself and Minister Jones. We had a good, full and frank conversation, and that letter then went to publication. You can see what the arguments are, and you have deployed them in your arguments, as well you might—if I were in your shoes, I would do the same.

Q Sure, but do you think that people might be concerned that you cannot say that no one had any pressure applied to them?

Sarah Sackman: What I know is that as a Minister, I seek, along with other Ministers, to set the culture of my Department. We keep the channels of communication open with all the stakeholders that you have heard from today, including many who are robustly not just opposing but campaigning against this. I was counting, and I think I must have engaged with the Bar at least 10 times since I became a Minister. I expect my officials to follow that lead, and that is the steer that they get from me: that we want to engage and have those conversations.

In advance of the particular engagement I am talking about, I held and led a number of stakeholder engagement sessions where I explained the rationale for the measures and what we were doing for victims. A number of those groups’ signatures ended up on that letter, so I did not persuade them, but the engagement was there—and it was open, convivial and constructive.

Q I have asked you twice, and you have given the answer, and people can make up their own minds about what can be implied from that.

Moving on to some extent, I can say to you, “This modelling says this,” and you can point to other modelling that says otherwise; I can say that court judge X disagrees with you, and you can point to a judge who agrees with you, and we can go back and forth. I am not seeking to do that, because I do not think it would be particularly productive.

I will instead try to pique your intellectual curiosity about the challenges for any Minister. Let us say we all agreed with your proposals in principle and that, if you were able to secure the changes you are seeking, they would be positive. The question is how you secure reform in Government—particularly major systems reform—successfully, and the challenges and unintended consequences that can arise. Have you spoken to any current or former Ministers who have embarked on a major reform programme similar to this? What lessons or points did they raise about how it can go wrong?

Sarah Sackman: There is no doubt that reform is challenging, but defending a status quo that—I think of the words used earlier—is producing shameful outcomes should shame us as a society. The first job of the state is to provide a justice system that is there for the citizen, whether accused of a crime or a victim. We are not doing that at the moment, in my view.

As you know, I was appointed a Minister on becoming an MP in July 2024, and I have always tried to approach that with a degree of humility, taking soundings from those with greater experience—including, by the way, Ministers from the previous Government, with whom I do not share politics but whose experience I respect. Over time I have met the likes of Alex Chalk, Jeremy Wright and Dominic Grieve and spoken to them about the state of our justice system and the challenges they faced in Government. Of course, I have also spoken to Ministers in the previous Labour Government, who did a huge amount as a reforming Government.

I am always somebody who asks questions. I hope I am intellectually curious and that I have asked questions of those who have administered the justice system, and so know how resistant it has been to reform. I will be really blunt and candid with you: I know when we have undertaken some reforms in the justice system—for example, before my time, the attempted digitisation of the civil justice system—billions of pounds of taxpayer money were spent and, frankly, it was a flop. It is still not digitised. You still go to county courts and they are covered in paper. A number of—I do not want to say bodies, because that is a bit crude—attempts at reform have been made in the past, and they have failed. I am realistic about the challenge we are facing, but I am also clear that the status quo is broken and that if we do not act, it would be a dereliction of duty.

Q Do you also agree that people who have the interests of victims at the heart of their thinking and positions on this can reasonably oppose your proposals, and that that does not in any way reflect a lack of concern for victims or the experiences they are going through?

Sarah Sackman: Of course I do. I have always said—and the Deputy Prime Minister has made the same point—that in reforming and rebuilding this system, we have sought to put victims at the heart of what we are doing. You will know that we are doing a lot on the victims code, through investment in victim services and how the reforms reflect that centring of the victims. Of course, victims are not a monolith. I met and spoke to Charlotte Nichols, who opposes aspects of these reforms and has her own experience as a victim. There is no universal victims’ voice, but there are very powerful victims’ voices we have heard today saying that we must improve and work together to get a better system to deal with those shameful delays.

Q Following on from the shadow Minister’s question about what good reform looks like, we have had a period of reform in the justice system. What would be your measure of success? We know the system is creaking under pressure, so what would success look like?

Sarah Sackman: There are two tests that I set myself, and neither is going to be easy to achieve within this Parliament. The first essay question is: can you deal with the intolerable delays? Can you ensure swift justice? That does not mean summary justice. That does not mean rushing through the cases, but it does mean getting through the caseload quicker so that people are not waiting for years. At the end of this Parliament, I do not want people waiting years for justice. That is the first test. It is the timeliness, which is the essential ingredient of fairness.

The second thing is: we are in a crisis, but we have an opportunity—with justice being the focus of our Parliament and our national debate for the first time in a very long time, and with real investment from the Treasury—to create something better. Our justice system has remained largely unreformed since the 1970s. There are lots of things that people might like about the 1970s, not least the music, but there were lots about our social values and our societal norms that were very different then. It was a different place for women, for black and minority ethnic communities, for gay people and lots of other communities. I do not think the system that was designed then is the one that we would design now.

We heard earlier from Katrin Hohl, who is leading work for the Government to embed some of the Soteria measures, which have been so good and progressive in the police and the CPS, into our courts. I know it can sound like a cheesy cliché, but my objective is the idea of building back something better, and designing a system that is not just sustainable and capable of dealing with the delays question but, in terms of its design, centres victims and is fair, particularly to women and black and minority ethnic communities. That is my objective: can we get a more progressive justice system?

Q Do you share my discomfort that we have no pilot to refer to, to see if the proposed measures would work?

Sarah Sackman: The difficulty is that any pilot where you are testing the sorts of measures that we are countenancing, which have taken their cue from the IRCC, would require primary legislation. We could not do this without primary legislation in the first place. Secondly, I do not feel discomfort, and I feel confident in the measures, because they are based on expertise that the independent review gave us. Thirdly, as we have heard, the time for pilots was yesterday—it was probably 10 years ago. The state of the backlogs at 80,000 and continuing to grow means that we have to pull every lever to not just reform the system but to invest in it and modernise it, to bring down those backlogs.

Q On pilots, I agree that something needs to be done now. A pilot ran during the pandemic that looked at dual court sitting days. That pilot showed that courtrooms were able to hear 3.5 cases in a week compared with the typical rate of 0.9. It was a short pilot that was run in seven courtrooms. Have you had conversations in the MOJ about alternative reforms to bring down the court backlogs? If you have, why was the decision taken to not look at that proposal? If you have not, why not?

Sarah Sackman: We learned a huge amount through the pandemic. To give a personal example, I had a trial that was due to come on the day that we went into lockdown, and we were told that we were going to do it on video link. People had been speaking for years about the use of videos in courts. They said you couldn’t do it: you could not cross examine a witness; you could not do your advocacy. Yet there we were. We were all told to go on video, and the sky did not fall in—it worked. We learnt and the MOJ got a lot of institutional knowledge through the pandemic.

There are also a lot of piloting initiatives that the MOJ is undertaking: for example, our pilots for our new digital listing tool, where we are taking some of the lessons from Liverpool and elsewhere but doing that using data. We are piloting that in Isleworth and Preston. A lot of that evidence would have been put forward to the IRCC. Obviously, it is also held within the MOJ. This package of measures that we are bringing forward, when you model, it is what we believe is capable of bringing down the backlog, together with the investment and modernisation.

Q If I can ask my question again to clarify, have you as the Minister had any conversations with any officials in the MOJ about the pilot that happened in the pandemic, specifically about two cases being heard in a Crown court in a day? Why was that discounted?

Sarah Sackman: On that specific example, I would have to go away and ask what was considered by officials because it has not been surfaced to my attention. I have had the blitz courts, where cases are listed very aggressively, brought to my attention, and we are doing them in London as of next month. I do not know about the specific pilot you are talking about. I have not considered that directly, but I am sure that my officials have.

I am happy to send you the Government link to that.

Sarah Sackman: I would appreciate that, thank you.

Q Sir Richard Henriques, who we heard from earlier, said that if we were not facing such a huge backlog we would not be here at all. I may have bastardised his language slightly, but do you agree with him?

Sarah Sackman: I think that I know where this is going, because I think that you will push me on this. Plainly, we are here, and the nature of the debate is shaped by the appalling backlog in our courts and the crisis we face—we all agree on that. There are 80,000 cases, and behind every one is a victim, and cases are being listed into 2030. This British justice system, which we will have huge pride in, is kind of indefensible.

You have heard me say in the Chamber, and I am not going to resile from it, that there are certainly parts of this plan that I would be advocating for anyway, because I think that they will make the system fairer and more sustainable. You heard the police chief talk about the fact that demand pressures come into the picture not just because of the backlog but because of the changing nature and complexity of criminal trials. The system needs to reform itself.

You heard Charlotte, one of the victims who spoke earlier, talk about the changes to the right to elect. I find it curious that Scotland, for example, does not have the right of election for a defendant. We know that it exists in Canada—we heard about that example—but it does not exist in Scotland, and there are lots of other jurisdictions where that does not exist. I find it strange that the defendant chooses the mode of trial, rather than the court triaging it. I use a healthcare analogy: if I go to A&E on a Saturday night, I do not get to insist that I get to see the specialist consultant if I can be treated appropriately by a resident health associate. It seems to me that the changes are normative and values driven, and would be good for the system anyway.

We probably would not be here at this time of night with this exact shape of debate if it was not for the crisis, but I stand by the principles that lie behind the reforms we are bringing forward.

Q Finally—I will be very quick—you spoke about making the system fairer, and I think that it is shared across all parties that we would like to see that. Will you be looking to address the disparity between the legal aid provision in magistrates courts and Crown courts during the passage of this Bill?

Sarah Sackman: That is a really good question, and you have asked me it in the Chamber. At the moment, 97% of applications for legal aid in the magistrates context are approved. We have to fully consider the IRCC package and see what final version of this Bill, if it passes through Parliament, receives Royal Assent, and then reassess and ensure that the availability of legal aid across both magistrates and Crown courts is not a barrier to access to justice. We have a means test in criminal legal aid, and that is important. It is important that people who can afford to pay their legal fees do but, where you do not have the means, it is important that you can access legal aid to get representation, which is why the hardship mechanism that we currently have exists. That will be a really important feature of the system to ensure that legal aid provision—

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of the Minister. I thank the Minister for her time today.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Stephen Morgan.)

Adjourned till Tuesday 14 April at twenty five minutes past Nine o’clock.

Written Evidence reported to the House

CTB 01 Frances Carr

CTB 02 Terence Ewing

CTB 03 An individual who wishes to remain anonymous

CTB 04 Arajpreet Kaur

CTB 06 Warwick Dumas

CTB 07 Magistrates Association

CTB 08 An individual who wishes to remain anonymous

CTB 09 Professor Rebecca Helm, Evidence Based Justice Lab, University of Exeter, School of Law

CTB 10 Both Parents Matter

CTB 11 David Lambert

CTB 12 Sean Merrifield

CTB 13 An individual who wishes to remain anonymous

CTB 14 His Honour Geoffrey Rivlin KC

CTB 15 Centre for Policy Research for Men and Boys

CTB 16 Mark Wyschna

CTB 17 Tim Crosland, Plan B. Earth