An influential group of MPs has delivered a damning verdict on the Courts and Tribunals Bill – telling the government that the magistrates’ court will not be able to cope with the volume of cases generated by curbs on jury trials, sounding the alarm over doubling magistrates' sentencing powers and questioning the time that judge-only trials will save.
In a 109-page report published today, the House of Commons justice select committee said the government should have published a formal response to Sir Brian Leveson’s criminal courts review before the draft legislation was published to enable proper parliamentary scrutiny.
‘Given the constitutional significance of the bill, it would have been proportionate for the government to have facilitated more meaningful parliamentary scrutiny, in particular, by allowing the justice committee to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny. The impact assessment states that the provisions in the bill will not be implemented until March 2028 at the earliest. It is therefore difficult to understand why the government has not sought to achieve a broader consensus on these proposals, both within parliament and outside, before pushing ahead with them,' the report states.
The committee said the government’s plan to double magistrates’ sentencing powers to 24 months was ‘diametrically opposed’ to what Leveson recommended. Enabling magistrates to jail people for two years ‘represents a significant shift in criminal justice policy and we are not convinced that this has been sufficiently justified’.
The committee is unconvinced the magistrates’ court will grow quickly enough to deal with the potential increase in workload. In 2005 there were 28,000 magistrates. In 2025, there were 15,000. The idea that the government can recruit 7,000 more magistrates by 2029 is ‘unrealistic’, the committee said.
The predicted 20% time that judge-only trials will save ‘lacks a concrete evidential basis’. The committee also voiced concern about the impact of the reforms on black and ethnic minority defendants.
‘It is shocking that only 1% of Crown court judges are black, a figure that has not changed since 2015. We recommend that the government takes action to improve progression routes to the senior judiciary and that it sets a clear national target to achieve a representative judiciary and magistracy by 2035,’ the committee said.
The bill is expected to return to the Commons shortly for the report stage, followed by a third reading, before heading to the Lords.
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