‘We know there are already Nightingale Courts sitting empty due to a lack of judges,’ Law Society president Lubna Shuja said.
‘The most pressing issue is there are not enough lawyers, court staff or judges to cover all the outstanding cases. Long-term investment is needed across the whole criminal justice system to remedy this.’
The Ministry of Justice said the crown court backlog had peaked at 62,000 in October 2022 during the strike action by the Criminal Bar, but fell by nearly 800 cases during the final two months of the year.
Bar Council chair Nick Vineall KC said keeping the courts open would help maintain capacity levels. However, he warned: ‘The large backlogs in court cases existed before the COVID pandemic and tackling it requires increased investment and increased capacity.’
Last week, shadow justice secretary Steve Reed set out Labour’s priorities for the justice system, in a speech at Middle Temple.
Condemning the Lord Chancellor’s Bill of Rights as ‘a Rights Reduction Act’, Reed said a Labour government would protect both the Human Rights Act and the UK’s European Convention on Human Rights membership, and could bring in new rights, for example, to clean air or adequate health care.
He said he would increase the number of crown prosecutors by 50% by allowing associate prosecutors to take on a bigger role, and would open specialist courts in order to speed up and prioritise the prosecution of rape cases.
On judicial diversity, Reed said he supported extending non-traditional routes to the judiciary, which could see more employed barristers and legal executives becoming judges.
He pledged a clampdown on SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), with ‘tough penalties against abusive litigation’ and protection against excessive costs. Last week, the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed it currently has 40 live investigations linked to SLAPPs, and warned that concerns about abusive litigation such as potentially ruinous but unmerited defamation proceedings have increased since the invasion of Ukraine.
Vineall KC said the proposals were ‘interesting’ and he looked forward to further discussions.
