Emma Lewell MP: Victims of crime should never be left to suffer delays to justice
Last week the Courts and Tribunals Bill was presented to Parliament. The Bill’s aim is to modernise the criminal justice system and address the backlogs of cases in the Crown Courts.
The Tories left us with a criminal justice system that is on the brink of collapse. The Crown Court backlog is now nearly at 80,000 cases, with an average case taking over 250 days to complete. Victims of crime should never be left to suffer such delays to justice, I know from working with many constituents the pain and heartache this can cause.
Crown Courts are where criminal cases are heard. A fundamental cornerstone of British Courts and Justice is that these cases are heard by a jury of 12 people.
In this Bill, the Government intends to scrap jury trials for crimes with sentences of less than three years. They say that the most serious cases will always get a jury, with magistrates and judge-alone trials considering other cases.
The plans have quite rightly caused outrage; the erosion of jury trials is seen as an affront to our fundamental rights of justice, liberty and fairness. Judge-only trials – putting complex decisions into the hands of one person, no matter how qualified, is never a good move. It will only lead to claims of
unfairness, mistrust and a further weakening in the public’s faith in our core institutions.
When these plans were first announced late last year, I joined colleagues in urging the Government to rethink them. We were clear that the problem of delayed justice won’t be solved by these measures because the problems are caused by cuts to the Ministry of Justice and courts lying empty on sitting days.
In the last year, courts have sat empty for 20,000 of the 130,000 sitting days available to them. Juries are not the problem.
When the Justice Secretary this week is reported as stating that – even with the scrapping of jury trials – the backlog will continue to rise, it is little wonder that most of us feel these plans are about saving money – not delivering justice.