Home Office and Ministry of Justice
If you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am talking about a major issue that relates directly to the estimates: the prison building programme, the need for that programme and what the Government are doing to manage the prison population. I believe it is directly related to the estimates in that regard. I repeat, sincerely, that multiple Governments of different parties have let prisoners out of prison early in order to manage prison crises, but they have never let rapists and child groomers out early. Government Members are therefore backing a totally unnecessary way of managing prison capacity. They really do not have to do it. They are being forced into doing so, and I feel very sorry for them as a result. It is difficult to understand how the Government can lay these estimates before the House and put forward a proposal for changes to sentencing if they do not even know how many people they are letting out of prison and for what reason. I cannot believe that the Minister thinks that that is acceptable, and it will be difficult for her to justify. But, to be fair, she may also struggle to answer a basic question about her own responsibilities—about her plans to erode our right to jury trial and to abolish our right to elect. The Conservatives will oppose any erosion of the right to jury trial. It is a constitutional protection that belongs to people, not to the convenience of a Government. The evidence does not support the case that jury trials are the cause of the backlog; empty courtrooms are. We are awaiting a date for Report stage of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. Given the political situation, and considering the Minister’s planned capital and revenue expenditure in this area, I think it is entirely legitimate to ask whether the proposal on jury trials is even still Government policy. When the legislation that is meant to address the central crisis in our criminal justice system is dependent on who wins an internal party election in the next few weeks—if there even is one—that is not a functioning legislative programme; it is chaos dressed up as reform. Are the Government laser-focused on what will actually work to bring the backlog down? No. Instead, they have been laser-focused on driving through unnecessary vandalism on one of our oldest constitutional rights. While the backlog is still much too high, the backlogs in Crown courts are stabilising and even coming down in some areas. The Government have announced uncapped Crown court sitting days for 2026-27, and we absolutely welcome that, even though it took much too long. It is exactly what we have called for consistently, and I give credit where it is due. We have seen the first quarterly decline in Crown court backlogs across England and Wales in three years in the most recent data. The Criminal Bar Association points out that in particular areas of the country, the reductions are more significant. In the south-east of England, the backlogs in courts are down 3.1% over three months and 4.2% over six months. In the north-west of England, they are down 2.3% over three months and 3.3% over six months. In the north-east of England, they are down 2.9% in three months. In Wales, they are down 2.4% over three months. Meanwhile, the figure for magistrates courts shows an all-time peak of more than 370,000 cases at the end of March this year, up 2% on the previous quarter—and the magistrates courts are where the Government want to send more cases. We heard again and again in the first stages of the Courts and Tribunals Bill that the workforce, whether it be in the courts, judges or legal representatives, can bring the backlogs down, but that the jury reforms were an unnecessary distraction. According to the X feed of the monitoring account Idle Courts, recently as many as 123 out of 516 Crown courtrooms—nearly a quarter—were standing empty on working days. We know that that was not because there were no cases to hear, no juries or no defendants. It was because of issues such as listing challenges, staffing shortages and the underutilisation of available court space. To date, the Government have not listened and have refused to drop those parts of the Bill that are, as the hon. Member for Chichester said, clearly unwelcome to so many in the workforce. I hope we learn today that what we are told about the views of the right hon. Member for Makerfield is correct and that this unacceptable plan to erode our jury rights will be dropped. Let me turn to the Home Office elements of this debate, because the two Departments are inextricably linked. Members will understand that it is not the day-to-day responsibility of the Minister or I, but we both know that what happens at the front end—policing, charging, and bail—flows directly into the courts, with probation and prisons at the back end. Police officer numbers fell by more than 1,000 in just one year under this Government, from September 2024 to September 2025, and the total number of people involved in policing fell by 3,000. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said in response to this year’s funding settlement and the estimates that we are debating that many forces are planning service reductions, with consequences for officer numbers, staff capacity and overall resilience. The Government cannot simultaneously claim to want swifter justice and a safer society while allowing the frontline workforce who investigate crime, make arrests and build prosecutions to continue to shrink. The Conservatives’ plan would put 10,000 extra officers on the streets, triple the use of stop and search, and introduce facial recognition technology in the worst crime hotspots. On asylum, the Home Office estimates that there are more than 400,000 illegal migrants in the UK—people in this country illegally—but nearly half cannot be removed because of outstanding asylum and human rights claims. Total spending on asylum support remains at over £4.5 billion, and the decision of the Government to put even more asylum seekers in more expensive locations such as Crowborough in Wealden in the constituency of your fellow Deputy Speaker, Madam Deputy Speaker, is going to cost more money than if they were to be kept in their original places. Let me close with this. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said that the focus of the debate can be distilled to concerns about the risks to public safety and trust, and he is right. We are spending more than ever before on our criminal justice system—billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money flow through the estimates we are debating—but reoffending is rising, rape gang survivors are being told that their abusers may be freed early and police officer numbers are falling. The Government may be about to change their Prime Minister, and with that the MOJ will more than likely welcome a new Lord Chancellor, so policies announced with great fanfare may quietly disappear over the summer, but the people waiting for Crown court hearings and the victims seeing criminals walk free will still be there. We will not oppose the estimate, but we will not let the Government off the hook, either. They have had nearly two years and the numbers are not getting any better. The public deserve better. The Opposition will hold them to account for every one of these figures, whoever happens to be sitting in Downing Street when we do it.