The Courts and Tribunals Bill will now head to the House of Lords after the government managed to get the proposed legislation - now revamped following a partial U-turn on jury trial reforms - through the House of Commons yesterday.
The bill returned with some notable changes - the biggest being the removal of a clause establishing the Crown Court Bench Division, which would have significantly narrowed the scope of cases heard by a jury. Justice secretary Alex Norris has added a new clause that will require him to commission an independent review on whether the bill has led to defendants from different racial groups or socio-economic backgrounds being treated differently.
MPs welcomed the government’s decision to scrap the Crown Court Bench Division. However, they also voiced concern about the extra work that the bill will still create for the magistrates’ court.
Conservative former attorney general Geoffrey Cox said the backlog in the magistrates’ court was four times bigger than the backlog in the Crown court and the Crown court backlog was stabilising.
Labour’s Catherine Atkinson, the newly-appointed chair of the House of Commons justice, said victims of crime and defendants would continue to be failed ‘if we sweep the queue away from the steps of the Crown court only to lengthen the line around the block at the local magistrates court’.
Rebel MP Karl Turner (independent) voiced concern about the greater sentencing powers that would be granted to magistrates as well as judge-only trials for complex and lengthy cases.
Courts minister Sarah Sackman told the Commons that the magistrates’ court was ‘coping well’ but acknowledged that capacity will need to increase. On judge-only trials for lengthy fraud and financial cases, Sackman said the proposal had ‘strong support from those responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious economic crime’.
The bill passed its third reading by 301 votes to 193 and now moves to the Lords.
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