Sarah Sackman MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Sir Brian, I would be grateful if you would elaborate for the Committee on the point you made about cultural change. Your view, expressed in the report, is that you think that a judge-only or Crown court bench division would save 20% at least—at a conservative estimate. You refer to a cultural change; can you elaborate and explain what you mean by that? Sir Brian Leveson: Yes. At the moment, there are undeniably defendants who are gaming the system. They are charged with a crime, they are told their trial will not be until 2028 or 2029, and they are happy to put it off. I gave an example in a debate on this subject. I said that in 1970 I would say to defendants in around November, “Well, this is a very strong case. If you are guilty, you are much better admitting it. You get a discount for pleading guilty and you can explain it, which will contain litigation.” More than once defendants would say, “Well, Mr Leveson, I am guilty, and I will plead guilty, but I want to spend Christmas with my kids, so I will plead guilty in January.” Now they can say, “I would like to spend Christmas 2028 with my children.” That was an anecdote from me, but after the debate a defence solicitor from London came up to me and said, “That example you gave—I am having that conversation every day of the week.” We need people to confront what they have done. I do not want anybody to plead guilty who is not guilty and has seen the evidence. I am not asking to change the guilty plea rate, but in the early days, you pleaded guilty on the first or the second occasion you appeared at the Crown court—now there are many examples of that happening on the fifth or the sixth occasion you are in the Crown court. Each one of those takes a considerable amount of time. That is what is sucking up part of the time. There are lots of other challenges to the system, which if you have had what I do not say is the benefit or privilege of reading both parts 1 and 2 of my review, you will see that I try to elaborate on there. I am concerned that we need to change the dynamic so that people address allegations that are made against them at the first opportunity, rather than hoping that the victim will withdraw, the witnesses will forget or the case will just fade away. That is the point I am talking about with cultural change.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Let me echo the shadow Minister’s thanks to you for being here. I appreciate that you have spoken in Parliament on other occasions, but I do not underestimate what it takes to repeat those stories again and again so that people like us can be educated on what that first-hand experience feels like. Charlotte, I wanted to pick up on something that you said. You talked about transparency and about the benefit that the recording of proceedings in the magistrates court would have. We are committed, as part of these reforms, to recording all proceedings in the magistrates court. Can you describe and explain what difference you think that might have made in cases like yours? Charlotte Meijer: Definitely. After I gave my evidence in my trial, I left. The gallery was not somewhere I could sit safely. It was a tiny bench. His best mate and his sister were sat there, so I could not really go and sit between them. I had said to the CPS and the police that I might want to come and hear the verdict. I was not given that opportunity, unfortunately. I got a call from my independent sexual violence adviser to say that the verdict had been made and that he was found not guilty. From that day, I really wanted to understand what had happened. For me, it was a very clearcut case of coercive control. I cannot go into too much detail, because he was found not guilty, but there was a huge age difference and there was a power imbalance and so forth, so I never understood how he was found not guilty. The judge also made some comments. She said that, because I waited eight months to report, I was unreliable, and that I had clearly spoken to other victims of domestic abuse, so I knew what to say. Those comments really stuck by me. For my healing, and for me to be able to move on, I just needed to understand what was said in court, so I went to ask for the transcripts, of which of course in the magistrates courts there are none. It is definitely twofold: I wanted to understand what happened for my healing, but I also still want to hold that judge to account, because the things she said are not true and should not be said by someone who should be in a position of power and education. I also think there is an important argument to be made around transparency, because people do not feel that the system is transparent—and to be fair, if it is not recorded, it is not. If you cannot sit in the gallery, if no one can watch and if there are no transcripts, then it is not. It is important to have the ability to record everything so that people can listen back, whether that is for their healing or for their understanding, or to hold people to account. We need to be able to hold people who are in power to account.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am aware of that distinction. Distinguished academics such as Professor Hoyano have made the point about the distinction with the system that we are bringing forward, where we are removing the right to elect. I understand that in your system, it is the defendant who elects. It is right, is it not, that many defendants actually elect for judge-alone? Doug Downey: Absolutely true—they do elect for that. There are different advantages for them, including the speed of the matter. There are advantages for our system in terms of the cost of the matter and getting people to a just outcome. It is more than an academic exercise in terms of what is fair, but people do choose that. I can tell you that we track the court of appeal pieces, and more often the appeal is because a jury has been misinstructed. Judges, trained properly, when they come to the bench, can segregate out things that need to be segregated out, but you cannot always do that with a jury.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The point about the pace at which the trial moves is an issue of contention. Some people say that having judge-alone for the same type of case will not save time compared with a jury trial. In your experience, once the election has been made by the defendant within the Canadian system, how much time is saved for the same sort of case with a judge-alone trial as opposed to a full jury trial? Doug Downey: At a minimum, months. There is no question but that it is faster, from the data and anecdotally. It is not just our jurisdiction; other jurisdictions in Canada have similar experiences; British Columbia, on our west coast, is a good example. There is absolutely no question. You can move through motions in the middle of trials without disrupting, and you can do preliminary hearings beforehand and not have to redo something in front of a jury, because the judge has already heard that part. There are systemic advantages for time.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  In the one that you cited. Tim Crosland: In the Ponting case?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It was not purely criminal damage. There were indictable-only offences. That particular case would have still received a jury trial. Tim Crosland: There have been a number of these cases. Mainly, they are either way, because they are usually criminal damage cases. The case now—as it remains, because there is a retrial—is criminal damage, and these are either-way cases. On the tests as set out in the Bill, mainly—and we have a lot of evidence of this—a judge would say that this would be less than three years, because it is mostly spray paint and relatively low-level damage. We have seen cases of high-level damage too, but it is never more than three years.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I want to be clear about the scope of this argument. Obviously, the least serious cases that take place in the context of public order would never get to the Crown anyway, because they could be heard within the magistrates—is that right? Tim Crosland: Increasingly they are getting to the Crown court, because of this and the previous Government’s crackdown on protests. We had the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; there is now a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for any act that interferes with the rights of anybody in any way. We are now getting more protest cases coming to the Crown court, and more than 200 people have been jailed in the last few years for peaceful acts of protest. But of those 200 people, only one has been jailed for more than three years. A number of people have been jailed for precisely three years—the threshold in this legislation—but only one for more than four years. Almost any judge would be able to say that it is incredibly unlikely that you will get a sentence of more than three years imprisonment—therefore, no jury.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would like to ask questions of the panel in relation to the practicality of what is being proposed, but also the principle. This is a question for all of you. Do you accept that in our system pragmatism has always determined which prosecutions are heard with a jury and which are determined by judges or magistrates? Sir Richard Henriques: Not much pragmatism as gravity, I think. The more serious cases will remain, pursuant to Sir Brian’s review, with juries. I heard the question “Are you trying to do away with juries?” earlier this afternoon. It is critical that the public do not think that we are doing away with juries. What is happening is a matter of pragmatism, as you say. Something has to change. The backlog has gone from 17,400 cases exactly six years ago to 80,000 now, and cases are being listed for four or five years’ time. Something has to be done. For my part, I agree with Lord Burnett: I would have preferred a judge and two magistrates. But something has to be done, and if judge alone is the only option, I am 100% in favour of it. I have no doubt that it will work and that it will save far more time than the Bar contends it will save. It will save a lot of time.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I think there is consensus between us that we need to grow capacity in the criminal legal profession. I think where we are disagreeing is that we say that it is unrealistic that that will happen in the short term. It is going to take years to build the Bar back to what it was in 2016, from where it is currently. It is going to take investment, legal aid and match funding for pupillages, and it will take years. Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree, because we have the example from 2022, where you have the increase in the barristers coming back. That happened within that first year. You could see the increase in the barristers coming back. Looking at the courts, we can see that happen when they are given the tools they need—where the courts cap is lifted. Woolwich in 2023 was an example of that, when it could then operate properly and start to reduce its backlog. When the courts were capped again, and they had reduced capacity and lost two judges, their backlog started going up again. We have plenty of examples where it is not as you are saying.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The independent review of the criminal courts referred to the genesis of the crisis that we are in. It has been driven by covid and cuts to spending and investment, but another driver that Sir Brian Leveson and his team have pointed out, which may explain why trials for the same sorts of case are taking twice as long now as they did 20 years ago, is the complexity of the evidence. We all carry around a smartphone now. From a policing point of view, can you give us an idea of how that affects policing work? Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. Because we carry around a phone and we have computers, laptops and a whole host of other electronic items, the investment in digital forensics for policing has been exponential. The types of offence that digital-enabled crime allows for are prioritised. You would expect child abuse cases and so on to get the priority because of the risk, including offenders’ risk to other children, but all forces across England and Wales have had to put significant investment into digital forensics.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am going to direct my questions to Ms Brimelow. I think we agree that the delays in our criminal justice system are a scandal and that something needs to be done about them, don’t we? Kirsty Brimelow: Yes, of course. That has always been the position.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q That is the point that I want to alight on. Lord Burnett, you were part of the Times crime and justice commission, which produced its report in 2025. The state of play now is even more dire, but you reached a similar conclusion: that the status quo is not something that we can continue to live with, and that courts without juries, whatever the composition—judge alone or judge sitting with two magistrates—could bring about swifter justice. Does that remain your view, Lord Burnett? Lord Burnett of Maldon: Yes, it certainly is my view. To be perfectly blunt, I am rather astonished by some of what I have been reading from people who I do not think are necessarily focusing on the evidence of what happens. I do not know whether the Committee is hearing from any magistrates or from district judges who sit in the magistrates court and the youth court, but they will tell you that either-way cases in the magistrates court and the youth court—of course, the youth court also does indictable offences—very rarely go beyond half a day. In the Crown court—Judge Goldstone will, I hope, be able to give you more detail—very few cases take less than a day and a half. That is not only because of the time-and-motion calculable time that having a jury involves, but because the way that advocates conduct cases in front of professional courts is completely different from the way they conduct cases in front of juries. It is much quicker, and a professional court can get the advocates to focus on the real issues, whereas in the Crown court the judge cannot interfere. I am convinced that the time saving will be enormous if the relatively low-level cases are tried by a new constitution. The same savings clearly would not be made in a 10-day or 15-day trial but that is, I think, not what we are looking at.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes. Kirsty Brimelow: You asked the question; just let me answer. If you focus on that, then that is the way to get back to 2016-17 productivity. The Institute for Government does not agree and says that it is highly uncertain, and even Sir Brian says that his time estimates are highly uncertain and based on assumptions.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Is the same thing true for APPEAL? Emma Torr: Yes, but you have to understand that if you—

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I would not disagree with that for one second.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for being here, Mr Flury. You have clearly mentioned that certainty on uncapped sitting days is hugely valuable to the system. You have mentioned a number of the areas where efficiencies, as I understand, are being made and developed with HMCTS, including prisoner transfer and better case co-ordination. We know that there are also plans to introduce blitz courts from 1 April. Would you care to expand on any of that to explain how HMCTS is gearing up and getting ready to deliver greater efficiencies in the system, so that it can bring down the backlog? Daniel Flury: I can, but may I begin by saying a bit about why certainty is so important for the courts, in particular? We go through this annual round—what we call the concordat process—where we discuss with the MOJ and the judiciary the amount of funding that HMCTS gets. That has been an annual process, so we operate on an annual cycle. Now that we have certainty over three years, it means quite a considerable amount to us. It means that we can confidently list over the next three years, so we can say to recorders whom we are trying to book now, “Look, this case is going to get on, and this date is going to be sat. We have the money to do this.” Having that certainty to book Crown court recorders and to recruit both staff and judges is a really important step for us. I will come back to the question about the other things that we are doing to improve efficiency. We are about to roll out case co-ordinators, which is another recommendation in the Leveson report. These are people in the Crown court who will actively manage the case, and who will be able to make decisions on behalf of the judge using delegated powers. They will really corral the system together to drive efficiency and drive readiness in a case. There is a whole variety of what we call blitz courts, which I would almost describe as a bet on the system. We try to brigade a number of cases that we know will either plead guilty or be discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service. Under the direction of the judges, we list those cases, knowing that they will be disposed of there and then. This essentially brings those cases forward on the hope and expectation—we use data to establish what could plead out—that it will give us an opportunity to clear them from the caseload. The product of that is not only reducing the caseload but indicating to the system, particularly the defendants, that their case is not going to languish for three or four years in places like London. It means that it will come on, and they have a far greater incentive to plead guilty knowing that the trial is a bit more proximate.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  No, that is not what is in the Bill. Mr Goldstone, I noticed you were nodding. Do you want to come in? Clement Goldstone: I had the advantage of listening with interest to the three circuit leaders straight after lunch today. They will probably never speak to me again, but I have to say that I did not recognise the validity of the argument that time would not be saved. Time will be saved in a number of ways. First, a lot of defendants who would otherwise have been tried by a jury and taken their chance will be far more realistic and take whatever credit is going if they know that they are going to be dealt with by a new division, whether it is one or three. Secondly, in my experience it is wrong to confine the savings, or the assessment of the savings, to empanelling and swearing in a jury. That is where it begins. Every sex case, I suspect probably nationally, now comes before the court with a direction that there will be no witnesses before 2.15 pm on the first day or, if the case is starting at 2.15 pm, until 10.30 the following morning. If there is no jury, there is no bar to the evidence starting within 10 or 15 minutes, because if there is to be an opening at all, it can be very brief—and I mean very brief. Half a day, at least, will be saved on every sex case that is heard in the Crown court. That is before you start with time lost as a result of jury sickness, or a juror being delayed because his train has been cancelled or her bus was delayed. It is also easier to call a witness out of order if you are not trying to take a jury through in the order in which the evidence would otherwise be called. You do not need to worry about engaging with counsel to ensure that they stick to and get to the point. They will realise that they will not be playing to the gallery as, with the best will in the world, we have all been inclined to do in the past when we have had a jury to try to convince, particularly if we have a bad case. I also do not accept that there will be additional time spent in the writing of judgments. The vast majority of decisions will follow the conclusion of the defence speech: ex tempore judgments in the overwhelming majority of cases or, in those very rare cases where something needs to be put into detailed construction, a verdict followed by a decision in writing, before sentence if there has been a conviction, within the next seven days if there has been an acquittal. There may be plenty of reasons why the restriction on the right to jury trial is not a good idea, but to suggest that time will not be saved is, in my view, not one of them.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q No doubt you would also welcome the investment the Government are making in uncapping sitting days and thereby removing the financial limit on how much you and others can sit in the Crown court. Claire Davies: Absolutely. That is something we have wanted for a very long time now, because that would have seen an immediate effect before now.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You have mentioned a number of ways in which HMCTS is pursuing greater efficiencies in the Crown court. Can you share with the Committee the work that HMCTS is doing with regard to growing capacity in the magistrates court? One of the effects of these reforms, if they make their way through Parliament, will be that some cases that would have gone to the Crown court will be diverted to the magistrates court. One question I have been asked in Parliament is about the important role that legal advisers play. Can you explain what HMCTS is doing to ensure that we maintain efficiency and grow capacity in the magistrates court? Daniel Flury: One of our biggest challenges in this whole programme is the need to expand operations in the magistrates court, particularly the numbers of legal advisers and magistrates we have. We expect to recruit 100 additional legal advisers every year for the next three years, and the critical thing for us is to make them stay and retain them—we have seen lots of our legal advisers go off to local authorities or the CPS. We are working closely with our trade unions at the moment on potentially improving their pay to improve retention, and we are devising development schemes, so we are hopefully going to offer pupillage to our barrister legal advisers. We are also supporting them in court. For example, we have recently developed a pilot using AI, where you take a case summary—what is called an IDPC pack, or initial details of the prosecution case—and it essentially summarises that case for the legal adviser. It tells them what the relevant points of law are and what the facts are in the case. These are ways in which we are both improving the efficiency of the magistrates court and improving the working conditions of legal advisers, because they really are critical if we are going to expand the magistrates court in this way.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Coupled with the procedural safeguards—things like the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and what have you, which we all think are a good thing—that driver of demand is not going away. Unlike covid, which thankfully has dissipated, it is now a permanent feature of our criminal justice system, I take it. Chief Constable Hatchett: Absolutely. We sometimes get better at what we do with it and I suppose the innovations become better, which may enable us to interrogate devices quicker. We hope that will come in time and we invest in the technology to do that, but the reality is that we live in a digital age. That goes across the board for us all.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Just finally to Ms Davies, if I may, you said that efficiencies must be tried first. That argument has been aired very widely. Do you have any sense of how long those efficiencies would take to bring down the backlog? If we pursued all the efficiencies, which the Government are doing—I have mentioned some examples—and maintained uncapped sitting days, how long would it take to bring down the backlog? Claire Davies: We do not know, because we have not been provided with the data that the Government have. We have consistently asked for the data.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you agree with me, on that major productivity driver that we need to address, that it will take years before we see that productivity gain? Cassia Rowland: It does need to be a long-term programme. There are some things that you can do in the short term, and we have already seen that. Just in the last couple of years, there has been an increase in publicly funded criminal barristers receiving legal aid income and so on.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q On your point about challenge, I do not think anyone in this room would dispute the importance of the right to protest. There is a difference where that breaks the law. The Government are fierce defenders of the independence of our judiciary, which often finds against the Government. That may be uncomfortable and we may disagree, but we have to take it on the chin. I do not doubt for one second the fierce independence of our judiciary. You said that we should make an exception for a niche group of cases but, fundamentally, what is the difference between someone who has broken the law—public order laws or otherwise—and a working-class defendant from a marginalised community? Why should they be treated any differently under our criminal justice system? Tim Crosland: I think that is a good question—

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q So you would agree with me that we cannot get those numbers of criminal lawyers back up to where they were overnight, can we? It is going to take years to train enough barristers to address that aspect of the productivity challenge, is it not? Kirsty Brimelow: I disagree with that, because the positive news is that when there is an investment in legal aid, such as happened in 2022—unfortunately, after criminal barristers had to take action—we see an increase in barristers coming back into criminal law. They are already trained—they have just left to go into other areas—but when there is an increase in legal aid, they have come back. Another Government pledge has been to increase legal aid by around £27 million. Our recommendation is that the sooner that can be done, the sooner you will hopefully reverse this and bring back some of the KCs who have left. May I pick up one other point? We are suggesting amendments to the Bill. We are completely alongside the Criminal Bar Association on restrictions on clauses 1 to 7. One proposal that we say will make a huge difference is, instead of having a court without a jury, having a court with a jury that focuses on sexual offences and domestic abuse cases. I think that was in the Labour party manifesto. Focus on those cases of the vulnerable people who are waiting. Bring those forward, prioritise those and reduce delays for those people.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, you do provide services to victims. Emma Torr: We provide services to individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. You could classify people like Andrew Malkinson and Peter Sullivan as victims, because they have suffered horrendous miscarriages of justice, so in that sense we do.