That, for the year ending with 31 March 2026, for expenditure by the Ministry of Justice:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £8,221,872,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 871 of Session 2024–25,
(2) further resources, not exceeding £1,367,223,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £8,813,378,000, be granted to His Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Sir Nicholas Dakin.)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this important debate on the spending of the Ministry of Justice on criminal justice.
An effective criminal justice system is vital to the proper functioning of a democratic society. An ineffective criminal justice system presents grave risks for both social and economic stability. We are at a pivotal moment for the health of our criminal justice system, with prisons operating at close to full capacity, coupled with a backlog in the Crown courts of over 74,000 cases. Investment and reform are required.
The Ministry of Justice suffered some of the most severe budget cuts of any Department during the years of Tory austerity. In 2023-24, its resource expenditure level was 11% less in real terms than it had been in 2010-11. I therefore welcome the Labour Government’s investment in the criminal justice system, announced through the main estimates and the spending review. The main estimates confirmed that the MOJ’s day-to-day spending is set to increase by £793 million or 6.5%, which includes further investment in the Prison and Probation Service and the Courts and Tribunals Service. The MOJ’s investment capital spending is also set to increase by £351 million or over 20%, largely driven by investment in creating new prison places and major projects to maintain court capacity and invest in digital systems and security measures.
The spending review also announced £7 billion to be allocated between 2024-25 and 2029-30 to support the delivery of 14,000 urgently needed new prison places by 2031, and an increase of up to £700 million a year for the Probation Service by 2028-29 compared with 2025-26. This is especially important given the recommendations made by David Gauke’s independent sentencing review, which I will come to in a moment. The spending review also announced up to £450 million a year of additional investment for the courts system by 2028-29, aimed at increasing Crown court sitting days and implementing the forthcoming recommendations from Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts, which is set to deliver its first report next month.
With 80% of offenders being reoffenders, does that not show that our current system is really broken and that we need a different approach? Does my hon. Friend agree that we have an opportunity with the sentencing review to keep our communities safer by properly addressing reoffending?
My hon. Friend, who is knowledgeable on these issues, is absolutely right. We are relying on the implementation of the Gauke review’s recommendations to do two things: to ensure there is capacity in the prisons for the growing number of people being sentenced in our courts; and, in the longer term, to reduce prisoner numbers through effective rehabilitation. That can take place in prisons—not in overcrowded prisons on the whole —but it can take place more effectively in the community by way of getting people back into normal daily life, which prison certainly is not.
In that vein, let me turn to the Probation Service, which will receive an additional £700 million a year to support the reforms in the sentencing review. That is a substantial increase in funding, which is intended to enable probation to supervise more people in the community and expand electronic tagging.
The Probation Service currently manages 240,000 individuals on court order or licence. Worryingly, in last year’s annual report, HM inspectorate of probation labelled 10 local probation services as “requires improvement” and 14 as “inadequate”. It identified staffing challenges, unmanageable workloads, deficits in casework and insufficient management of risk, public protection and safeguarding. However, it also found outstanding statutory victim work, commitment and vision from staff and some good partnership working. The Committee has seen that itself on its visit to probation services.
I will however raise my concern about the ability of Serco, the current electronic tagging provider, to deal with the dramatic increase in demand on its services that will inevitably result from the sentencing Bill. The Committee has been in frequent correspondence with the Prisons Minister to raise our concerns regarding Serco’s poor performance, which has also been highlighted by Channel 4 and its “Dispatches” programme.
The Committee has identified several issues with management of the tagging contract, including substantial delays to the fitting of tags, even to serious offenders. We were shocked to learn that financial penalties have been levied on Serco every month since it took on the service in May 2024. It is unclear how Serco will be able to deal with increased demand given its unacceptable performance in managing the electronic tagging service at its current level.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about court backlogs. Another factor is having the appropriate magistrates, legal advisers and so on to hear these cases. The Magistrates’ Association has raised concerns that the spending review allocation is insufficient to tackle that. Does he share those concerns?
I do share those concerns. I want to take only a few more minutes with my speech, so I do not have time to go into what is happening in the magistrates courts as well—that is a debate for another day—but the shortage of magistrates, the shortage of legal clerks and low pay rates across HMCTS are clearly some of the factors that prevent us from getting to grips with the backlog, even though I have no doubt the Government wish to do that.
I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s allocation of 110,000 sitting days in the Crown court for 2025-26: the highest sitting-day allocation made since HMCTS was created and the biggest financial settlement ever made for the Crown court. I hope that that is enough to bring about some reduction in the backlog. However, I note that the allocation is below the 113,000 days that the Lady Chief Justice told the Committee the Crown court could sit for in the last financial year, and there have been similar increases in sitting days for other courts, including the magistrates court, which will sit for up to 114,000 days a year.
The Government have acknowledged that the allocation of days is not enough on its own to severely reduce the backlog in the Crown courts and that more radical reform is required. I therefore welcome Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of criminal courts, which will propose options for both short and long-term reforms aimed at ensuring cases are dealt with proportionately in the light of current pressures on the Crown court and explore how the courts could operate as efficiently as possible. I look forward to the first report of the review, which is due to be published next month.
I will briefly touch on the role of the Legal Aid Agency. In terms of expenditure, the LAA is the third largest body within MOJ. Its day-to-day budget was around £0.9 billion, which comprised 8% of the MOJ’s total resource budget. Between 2009-10 and 2023-24, resource expenditure on legal aid decreased by 2% in cash terms and by 31% in real terms. I was surprised to see that the spending review did not include a specific funding allocation for the Legal Aid Agency; the only reference to it was in the context of potential efficiency savings that the MOJ will make in the review period.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of legal aid solicitors and barristers will only compound the problems of the court backlog? That is because cases will either have to be adjourned as a consequence of lack of legal counsel or they will take longer when defendants appear without legal counsel because those defendants will need more time and support from the court and other court services. Is my hon. Friend concerned about that?
That is already happening. Non-availability of counsel, whether Crime Prosecution Service or defence counsel, is already one of the main reasons for ineffective trials. I therefore hope we will hear something about that and the Government’s plans to alleviate it when the Minister responds.
I briefly mention the cyber-attack that the Legal Aid Agency was subject to in April. The attack revealed serious concerns about the robustness of Government-managed digital services and the protection of sensitive data, and holds risks for the day-to-day operation of the justice system. We need the further statement that the Courts Minister promised on the steps being taken to recover that position—not today, perhaps, but soon—and the Committee will conduct its own inquiry into access to justice, beginning with a call to evidence this summer.
I reemphasise the importance of the role the criminal justice system plays in the proper functioning of our society. Out of sight should not be out of mind, in that respect. I appreciate the steps that this Government are taking and the struggle and the tasks that they have going forward. However, there is so much to do that we need to get on with it in a speedy fashion.
Finally, let me thank all those who work in the criminal justice system: those who risk their lives and their safety as frontline prison officers and probation officers, and those who keep the system running—judges, barristers and court staff. Across the piece, we see people going above and beyond because of the situation in which the system has been left. I am sure this is one point that will unite both sides of the House: we all appreciate the work that goes on every day to keep people safe and to ensure that justice is done.
The Chancellor substantially increased the budget of the Ministry of Justice in the spending review from £11.9 billion in 2023-24 to £15.6 billion in 2028-29. We are told that that is a real-terms increase of 3.1% over five years. It is our duty in this place not just to applaud ever larger sums of money being spent, but to scrutinise whether that money is spent well and to ensure it represents good value for money for the taxpayer. There is no question but that the criminal justice system is under strain. I trust the Lord Chancellor will do her best to ensure that she uses the money wisely to fix the various problems the Chairman of the Select Committee has described.
One of the biggest problems facing the criminal justice system is the Crown court backlog. As of the end of 2024, almost 75,000 cases were awaiting trial. That is an increase on the figure when the Lord Chancellor took office and it is projected to rise further. Justice delayed is justice denied. Witnesses’ memories fade and victims feel that they have been forgotten. I appreciate that much of that rise was caused by the pandemic, and we are still dealing with the fallout, but the Lord Chancellor must do more to reduce that backlog.
Although there is more money for the courts as part of the spending review, we need to ensure it is effectively deployed. The Government say it is a priority, yet we still have empty courtrooms. When the Lady Chief Justice came to Parliament last November, she offered 6,500 additional sitting days. Will the Minister explain why the Lord Chancellor did not accept every single one of the extra days offered? The Lord Chancellor must use the additional money she has been given to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of both the Crown and magistrates courts, and to reduce the backlogs.
The justice system also faces a lack of prison spaces. The Gauke review, commissioned by the Lord Chancellor, has effectively recommended the ending of short prison sentences in favour of community sentences. About half of admissions to prison are for sentences of less than 12 months. The Howard League says that about 30,000 people a year are sentenced to six months or less. Setting aside for one moment whether that is the right policy, which I doubt, if it is implemented by the Government it will require a very large increase in the number of probation officers.
My hon. Friend talks about probation and prison places. Does he share my concern that it is all very well for the Government to announce £7 billion to deliver prison places by 2031, which is six years away, while 16,000 prisoners are walking the streets because they were released earlier by this Government? What will happen in the next six years? Will more prisoners be released early while we wait for those prison places?
The danger is that the public lose confidence in the criminal justice system if prisoners are released so early. As I mentioned, there is already a shortfall of nearly 2,000 probation officers. In fact, there are now 200 fewer probation officers than when Labour took office. If the Government intend to go ahead with this plan, we need to know how they plan to recruit the additional probation officers that they will need. What is their plan? If they go ahead with abolishing short sentences, those community sentences will have to be seen by the public to be really tough and worthwhile if the criminal justice system is to retain confidence. I fear that the Government do not have a plan for that. Although we see more money allocated in the budget for prison and probation services, we do not get any detail about what that means for the recruitment of those extra probation officers. I would be grateful if the Minister could address that point.
I also ask the Government to look at other methods of alleviating the strain on prison places that do not involve additional expenditure—for example, deporting foreign national offenders. There are currently 11,000 foreign offenders in our prisons, but our record on deporting them remains poor. Only 3,500 were deported last year, and too many are still able to avoid deportation by using the European convention on human rights. This needs to change. The Government have said that they will review the right to family life being used in appeals in serious cases related to asylum seekers who have been convicted of sexual offences. I welcome that, but we need to go much further. We should deport all foreign national offenders at the end of their sentences and disapply the Human Rights Act.
The obvious way to ensure that we have enough prison spaces in the longer term is to build more prisons. During the general election campaign, Labour promised to build 20,000 additional places, but in the year since the Government took office, little progress has been made, and it was recently revealed that they have actually cut hundreds of millions of pounds from the capital budget to cover the cost of pay increases for staff and the imposition of the Chancellor’s jobs tax.
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Combining the estimates and the spending review presents a largely positive picture for investment in the MOJ. The estimate for resource expenditure in 2025-26 is 14% more than the spending plans for 2024-25. This increase may help to offset some of the underfunding that the Department was subject to in the 2010s. The estimate for capital expenditure in 2025-26 is 32% more than the plans for the year 2024-25. This will be a record high level of capital expenditure for the MOJ over the course of a financial year. It remains to be seen whether the funding will be enough to address the challenges that the criminal justice system faces.
In the interests of time, I will focus on three key areas: prisons and probation, the courts and legal aid. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is the largest body within the MOJ in terms of expenditure. It makes up 47% of the MOJ’s day-to-day spending budget and in the 2025-26 main estimate will make up 82% of its planned capital spending. The prison population has more than doubled over the last 30 years and stands at around 88,000. It continues to grow year on year and is at a record high. If things continue as they are, the prison population will be at 93,500 by September 2026 and over 100,000 by September 2028, and there will not be sufficient places.
The MOJ cites the following reasons for the increase: an increase in police charging activity and flow into the courts; an increase in people on remand, who now make up an astonishing 20% of the prison population; and changes in sentencing policy, which keeps the more serious offenders in prison for much longer.
I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s commitment to build 14,000 prison places by 2031, and I hope that will ensure that emergency measures such as SDS40, which last year saw prisoners released automatically having served 40% of their sentences, do not have to be used again. In the context of the prison capacity crisis, the Government commissioned a sentencing review, which reported last month, by David Gauke, who gave evidence to the Committee last week. Many of the review’s recommendations have been accepted in principle by the Government. They include a recommendation for a new model of sentencing called the “earned progression model”, which could see some prisoners serving fixed-term sentences released after a third of their sentence, dependent on their behaviour. That recommendation and others in the review are aimed at making greater use of non-custodial sentences and therefore attempting to reduce the prison population. I look forward to seeing the detail of how those recommendations will be implemented in the forthcoming sentencing Bill.
Non-custodial sentences will place an additional burden on the already struggling Probation Service, to which I will turn. But, before I do that, could I issue a cautionary note? Even if David Gauke’s recommendations are wholly successful, prisons will still be full, and that has unintended consequences. It means, for example, that prisoners have to be slotted into places where those become available, and rehabilitation is more difficult. As Sky News reported recently, some prisoners are put into lower category prisons—category C and D prisons—years before they should be with regard to their sentence planning, and the prisoner escort service, which is already in a pretty parlous state, often brings prisoners late to court because it is not available at local prisons. Therefore, anything that can be done for effective community punishment and rehabilitation is clearly good.
I turn briefly to conditions in the prison estate. In 2023, HM chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor said that one in 10 prisons should be closed down. He stated that about 14 Victorian jails were so poorly designed, overcrowded and ill-equipped that they could not provide proper accommodation for prisoners. Last year, 63% of prisoners reported overcrowding. That is often with two or more prisoners in a cell that was designed for one person, with no private toilet facilities.
Drugs are an increasing problem in prisons. The Committee has covered that extensively in its “Tackling drugs in prisons” inquiry, which is due to report shortly. Between April 2023 and April 2024, almost 50,000 adults aged 18 and over were in alcohol and drug treatment in prisons and secure settings, which was a 7% rise compared with the previous year. In the 12 months to December 2024, there were 10,600 assaults on prison staff—violence is also on the increase in prison, which is partly a result of the unpredictable environment created by the abundance of drugs available—which is equivalent to 122 assaults per 1,000 prisoners, an increase of 13% from the previous year and the highest number of assaults on prison staff recorded in one year. The use of force by prison officers and rates of self-harm among prisoners have also been increasing in recent years. Self-harm was 10% higher in 2024 than in 2023.
Overcrowding, increased drug use, violence and self-harm contribute towards a distressing environment in prisons such that the vital function of prisons to rehabilitate offenders can be almost impossible in some institutions. We are undertaking a major inquiry into rehabilitation and resettlement, which I hope will shed more light on these troubling pictures.
Beyond all that, we have the continuing scandal of IPP prisoners—those imprisoned for public protection. I recommend to the Minister the proposals published this week by the Howard League on a new approach to IPP prisoners, which would serve to reduce the numbers continuing in custody substantially.
Let me turn to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which is the second-largest body in the MOJ. In the Government’s main estimate for 2025-26, spending on HMCTS accounted for 21% of planned resource spending and 12% of capital spending. The current backlog of outstanding cases in the Crown court stands at about 4,000. That is a result of a number of factors, one of which is the shortage of criminal lawyers, driven by low legal aid pay rates and poor working conditions. The backlog in the courts is detrimental to the lives of thousands of people. Victims, witnesses and defendants alike are forced to wait in limbo for justice.
Concerns have been raised about the sustainability of the criminal legal aid sector, given the number of legal aid firms and of solicitors and barristers practising in this area. In March 2025, the Law Society said that the number of criminal duty solicitors had fallen by 26% since 2017 and that that may, in future,
“leave many individuals unable to access their right to a solicitor and free advice.”
Even though I welcome the MOJ’s announcements in December 2024 of an additional £92 million per year for criminal aid solicitors, and I look forward to seeing the results of its consultation on that, it may well not be enough. Indeed, the 15% uplift in criminal barristers’ fees as a consequence of the Bellamy review took so long to come in and was so far overtaken by other increases in cost that that again needs to be looked at in the near future if we are to sustain the criminal Bar.
It is always tempting to welcome an increase to a Department’s budget, but we need to ensure that the spending is matched by proper accountability and planning. We cannot afford for this new funding to be simply absorbed by justice bureaucracy. Will the Minister explain how much of the extra money that his Department has been allocated will go in additional national insurance charges, wage rises and inflation? It is simply not credible to make countless promises in opposition or on the campaign trail, only to quietly shelve them when in office. The Opposition will hold the Government to account for the commitments they have given.