The Treasury claims to have increased the Ministry of Justice’s resources budget by 5% and confirmed an extra £80m for the Crown Prosecution Service.

In today’s spending review, chancellor Sajid Javid announced a 4.9% increase in real terms to the MoJ’s resources budget for 2020-2021. The Bar Council described ithe new money as 'drops in the ocean'.

The Spending Round 2019 policy paper promises £55m across the criminal justice system to support the work of 20,000 additional police officers and £100m to increase security in prisons.

Meanwhile the law officers’ departments – the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the Treasury Solicitor’s Department – saw their budgets increase by 12.4% to £700m. The increase included £80m of additional funding for the CPS.

Javid also announced that Companies House will receive £8m of funding to deliver new policies relating to economic crime and anti-money laundering, while the  Supreme Court will receive £5.5m, up from £4.4m.

Elsewhere in a set of announcements widely interpreted as a pre-election give-away, NHS England’s budget grew to almost £130bn and the Department for Education’s budget reached £67.8bn.

Malcolm Cree CBE, chief executive of the Bar Council, said: ’The budget boost for the MoJ and CPS is necessary and overdue. But, although welcome, they are drops in the ocean in budgetary terms and will only go so far in restoring a justice system which is falling apart at the seams. We need a longer term vision of how public confidence in tackling crime can be restored.’