The Crown court backlog will continue to rise without ‘significant’ additional systemic reforms, the Ministry of Justice’s top civil servant told MPs yesterday.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo said: ‘Receipts have gone up significantly. Demand has increased dramatically. Demand is going to continue to grow and outstrip our ability to deal with that demand.’
There is ‘no silver bullet’ to resolving the backlog, Romeo added. ‘It is not just a temporary issue because of Covid, although that did originally increase demand. We are not going to be able to solve all these problems at once. What we are trying to do is reverse long-term trends.’
Asked if Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts will provide a solution to the backlog, Romeo said it would be a ‘fundamental look at reforms we can make in the longer term’ which would be ‘wide-ranging and important in what it proposes’.
Romeo added: ‘We are looking constantly… at work we’re doing to improve efficiency and productivity in the courts. We do the most we can with the money we’ve got.’
Questioned on the cost of Nightingale courts, Nick Goodwin, chief executive of HM Courts & Tribunals Service, told the committee that ‘the rule of thumb’ is that Nightingale courts are three times more expensive to run than conventional courts.
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