A committee of MPs say they are ‘not convinced that the magistrates’ court will be able to cope with the potential increase in caseload that the bill could generate’. That’s from the Justice Committee of MPs in a report.
A lack of a formal response by Government to Part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts has ‘inhibited scrutiny’ of its reform proposals, the report said. Ahead of the Government’s Courts and Tribunals Bill returning to the Commons, the Committee has published a critique of the Bill, taking evidence including from Sir Brian Leveson. While the MPs recognised the scale of the Crown Court backlog, with some victims told they will wait until 2030 for trials to be heard, their report called on the Government to set out ‘in much more detail than it has done so far, that the plan to expand capacity in the magistrates’ court is deliverable’. The report queried as ‘unrealistic’ Labour’s proposal to recruit 7,000 magistrates in three years.
The committee chair is Labour MP Andy Slaughter. He said: “The Government’s target of having 21,000 magistrates in post by 2029 is unrealistic. Ministers must demonstrate in more detail how the plan to expand capacity in the magistrates’ court is deliverable. The Committee shares the significant concerns of many in the justice sector around the potential equality impacts of the bill, particularly in relation to race. It is ‘shocking’ that only one per cent of Crown Court judges are Black, a figure that has not changed since 2015.
“The persistence of such stark underrepresentation demonstrates that efforts to date have failed to deliver meaningful change. The Government must take action to improve progression routes to the senior judiciary and set out a clear national target to achieve a representative judiciary and magistracy by 2035.”
Photo of Nottingham court, by Mark Rowe.
