PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Crown Prosecution Service: Support for Victims - 19 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

One of my priorities as Solicitor General and the priority of the Director for Public Prosecutions, whom I met earlier this week, is tackling the intolerable backlog in our courts and transforming the way in which we support victims of crime. The Prime Minister has set out our plan for change, which will restore confidence in our criminal justice system. We have worked with the CPS to make recent changes to its processes in order to improve communication with victims, strengthen the victims’ right to review scheme, reduce the rates of victim attrition, and reduce delays.

You will know, Mr Speaker, that Edmund Burke said:

“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society”,

but injustice reigns when victims feel that the cause of their plight is being neglected. Such was the case in Sutton Bridge, where a constituent of mine, a six-year-old girl, suffered the dreadful event of indecent exposure. The man was known in the community and was reported by the father of the child, and CCTV footage was available. When crimes of that kind are not investigated properly, people lose their faith in justice. We must deal with those crimes, in the interests of the very justice that Edmund Burke recommended.

I am very sorry to hear of the incident in the right hon. Member’s constituency; that is indeed appalling. It is vital for this type of conduct to be taken seriously, and policing is key to that. We need more police officers and police community support officers, which is why, as part of our plan for change, we have promised to put 13,000 more police officers and PCSOs back on the beat with a named officer for every neighbourhood. We also need to improve the experiences of victims within our criminal justice system, and that includes better communication between victims and the CPS.

Merry Christmas, Mr Speaker. I welcome my hon. Friend to the Front Bench, and congratulate the former Solicitor General, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman), on her promotion to Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice. It is sometimes difficult to keep up with this Government’s pace.

Given that the Crown court backlog stands at over 73,000 and trials are being listed for 2027, victims are awaiting justice for an unacceptably long time, with the consequence that many no longer feel able to support the process. How is the Solicitor General working, through the CPS, to ensure that victims facing a wait of between two and three years for trials stay the course?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his kind words, and I look forward to appearing before his Committee on 15 January. He is right to say that we need to be doing much more to support victims. He alluded to the review of the Crown courts; he will also know that the Lord Chancellor is taking steps to reduce the Crown court case load by increasing funding for sitting days, and further sitting days were announced yesterday—an extra 2,000, I believe.