My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to his current role. This is the first time I have encountered him speaking from the Dispatch Box.
The Government inherited a record and rising backlog that now stands at 73,000 cases—twice the figure of five years ago. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, there is a human cost to these delays. Victims are waiting years for justice and the attrition rate in rape cases has more than doubled in the last five years, from 2.9% in 2019 to 7.5% now—so I recognise the figures he quoted. This Government are funding a record allocation of Crown Court sitting days to deliver swifter justice for victims—110,000 sitting days next year, which is 4,000 more than the last Government funded.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, asked me a number of questions. Basically, the question was why we were not maximising the number of sitting days and taking up the Lady Chief Justice’s offer, as he put it, of sitting at capacity in the Crown Court system. There are two simple answers to that. One is a cash constraint—and I think we need to acknowledge that the Lord Chancellor has wider responsibilities than the courts and has to balance how the money is spent on the whole criminal justice system. We acknowledge that there are serious issues, and we have increased the number of sitting days. The second point is that it is wise to keep some headroom within the Crown Court system. We saw the benefit of that when we had the riots last year and were able to deal with them really quite quickly, in part because of the policy of keeping some headroom within the Crown Court system.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, rightly said that trials are bedevilled by delays, and he was right when he said that victims drop out of the system and there are many problems because of the many delays within our system. The noble Lord mentioned the concordat process. It is worth noting that that process has been accelerated this year; it has been resolved much earlier in the year than in many previous years, which will give more certainty to the judges when they are planning and allocating their sitting days between the various courts. That is the benefit of the system that the Lord Chancellor has introduced.
I reject the charge that we are tinkering at the edges. The fundamental point, which I think the noble Lords, Lord Marks and Lord Cameron, acknowledged, is that ever-increasing sitting days will not solve the problem. We need more radical reforms, and we are looking to Sir Brian Leveson to present reforms. A number of things are being constantly talked about in the papers. We do not know exactly what he is going to recommend, but we are absolutely clear that there needs to be a much more radical change in how we deal with trials in the magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts. We have obviously gone some way within the magistrates’ courts by doubling magistrates’ sentencing powers to 12 months—but, again, that is a marginal benefit, and there need to be other changes. We are looking forward to Sir Brian’s recommendations.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, spoke about repairs to the courts. As I think he acknowledged, there has been an increase in court maintenance, up to £148 million from £120 million—but of course we are trying to catch up on many years of underinvesting in our court estate. I have personally seen a number of courts that are in dire need of emergency maintenance. I acknowledge the point that the noble Lord made, but we are taking steps in the right direction to try to increase the quality of our court estate—and there are a number of Nightingale courts still operating, partly for that reason.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, made another point about the sexual offences or RASSO cases, and how people are waiting far too long. Some courts, including Bristol Crown Court, I believe, are using a different approach—I hesitate to use the word “specialist”—to how they bring on RASSO-related cases. I believe that a couple of other Crown Courts are looking at this as well. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the point that the noble Lord made about the importance of doing this—otherwise, you will get a higher victim drop-out, which is not in the interests of justice.