Victims in 53,000 cases will still be waiting for justice in three years under Dominic Raab’s “meagre” plans to reduce “unacceptable” court delays, MPs have said.

MPs on the Commons public accounts committee said that the Justice Secretary’s aim to reduce the backlog by less than 8,000 cases to 53,000 by Mar 2025 was unlikely to end the delays to justice for victims, witnesses and defendants.

They said that since Mar 2020 alone, the number of cases waiting longer than a year had increased by more than 300 per cent – a quadrupling from 2,830 to 11,379.

Even worse affected were victims of rape and sexual offences, where the number of cases waiting longer than a year had increased by more than 400 per cent since the onset of the pandemic, from 246 to 1,316.

“As victims are made to wait longer for their cases to be heard, their lives are put on hold and their trauma is prolonged,” said the MPs.

“As waiting times increase, so does the risk the victim withdraws from the process and the case collapses. While the proportion of cases collapsing in the courts in this way has reduced recently, the scale of victim attrition in other stages of the criminal justice process is unacceptably high.”

Dominic Raab’s plans ‘unconvincing’

Overall, the number of cases in the Crown Court waiting to be resolved has nearly doubled since Mar 2019, from an all-time low of 33,290 to 59,928 cases in Sep 2021.

“Unacceptable delays to justice for victims, witnesses and defendants is unlikely to be addressed by the department’s meagre ambition to reduce the Crown Court backlog by less than 8,000 cases by March 2025,” the MPs added.

“We remain unconvinced of the department’s intentions to reduce waiting times in the Crown Court, given the slow pace of recovery.”

‘Significant, systemic challenges’

The committee also warned that there were “significant, systemic challenges” to clearing the backlog, citing potential shortages of trained judges, legal professionals and local staff to support criminal courts.

It said that the Government needed to recruit 78 full-time, salaried circuit judges despite previously struggling to fill 63 positions, falling 11 short with 52 appointed.

“The resulting dependence on deploying criminal barristers and solicitors as part-time judges, as well as increasing the workload of part-time judges, to make up the shortfall reduces much-needed capacity within the legal profession to prosecute and defend cases,” said the MPs.

Concerns over prison capacity

They said that they remained “unconvinced” that prisons would be able to cope with the likely increase in the number of criminals jailed as a result of the extra 20,000 police officers being recruited by the Government, as well as more cases being concluded to reduce the backlogs.

It said there was a danger that the prison service could fall 2,000 places short, warning there was “no contingency” in the Ministry of Justice’s plans if police recruitment led to more cases entering the courts than expected, or if there were delays in its prison building programme.

Dame Meg Hillier, the chairman of the committee, said: “The Ministry of Justice says it will take two years to cut this backlog by less than a sixth. It’s just not good enough. The number of people waiting more than a year to have a serious criminal case heard has more than trebled since Mar 2020 from already unacceptably high levels.

“Government can’t keep shrugging off the question of what adding 20,000 new police officers to the mix will do. The Ministry of Justice must look at the challenges it’s facing in the round and come up with a plan that deals with them, not worsens them.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The crown court backlog has fallen significantly in recent months and we are on track to get through a fifth more cases next year than in to the year running up to the pandemic.

 “This is thanks to our half-a-billion-pounds plan to speed up justice – including unlimited court sitting days, Nightingale Court extensions and greater powers for magistrates – while our £4 billion prison-building programme will deliver 20,000 more places by the mid-2020s.”