The influential MPs’ committee said reducing the backlog, which has nearly doubled since March 2019, to 59,928―by ‘less than 8,000 by March 2025’―is ‘unlikely to address unacceptable delays to justice for victims, witnesses, and defendants’.
It identified ‘significant, systemic challenges’ to clearing the backlog, including a shortfall in numbers of trained judges, legal professionals and local staff to support criminal courts. It also ‘remains unconvinced that the prison system will cope with the likely increase in prisoners’, given plans to recruit 20,000 more police officers.
PAC chair Dame Meg Hillier said: ‘The Ministry of Justice says it will take two years to cut this backlog by less than a sixth.
‘It’s just not good enough. The number of people waiting more than a year to have a serious criminal case heard has more than trebled since March 2020 from already unacceptably high levels.’
The pandemic exacerbated the backlog in the Crown Court, which peaked at 61,000 in June 2021.
Law Society president I Stephanie Boyce said: ‘Years of underinvestment and cuts mean there is a real risk that the capacity is simply not there in terms of solicitors and barristers, as well as judges, to do the large volume of work necessary to clear the backlog in a meaningful fashion.
‘Investment is needed now across the entire criminal justice system, starting with the immediate implementation of the 15% increase in criminal legal aid rates recommended in Sir Christopher Bellamy’s Independent Review of Criminal Legal Aid. Ensuring that any barriers preventing diverse candidates from getting opportunities in the profession are tackled, as well as recruiting from diverse talent pools of fee-paid and salaried judges in courts and tribunals, will help to build the capacity needed to clear the backlog.’
Professor Chris Bones, chair of CILEX (the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives) said increasing ‘the pipeline of CILEX judges to all judicial appointments, not just the lower tribunals’ would make ‘an immediate difference’.
