The Green Party has pledged to invest £11 billion in restoring legal aid budgets, recruiting more judges and repairing the court system. The party’s manifesto, released today, also pledges to restore legal aid for public law cases ‘so everybody can uphold their rights in court’.

It has also pledged to repair and renew the court system, including repairing buildings, with a £2.5bn investment. 

Further, the party claims it will ensure the criminal bar is ‘sufficiently well funded’ and that it will ‘push to recruit more judges and to ensure that they are representative of wider society’.

A Green Party government would also scrap the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, Public Order Act and other legislation that they say ‘erodes the right to protest and to free expression’.

The manifesto reads: ‘The court system is in chaos and it’s letting down victims and the accused, whilst large numbers of prisoners on remand and endless court cancellations create knock-on effects for the prison and probation services too. The Green Party will invest £11bn in restoring the Ministry of Justice budget over the course of the next parliament.’

Meanwhile the party ‘is committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights’, the manifesto states. ‘The recent rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism highlights the importance of tackling hate crime and opposing divisions in our society. Elected Greens will support the right to religious expression and work with religious communities to defend the safety of places of worship.’

The manifesto also pledges to back assisted dying, reform drug laws to introduce a regulated market and to enshrine the right to breathe clean air in the law.

 

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