Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
12th Report - Crown Court backlogs
Published 5 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Crown Court backlogs All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
MoJ confirmed that the proportion of ineffective trials–those that do not go ahead on the planned date and are relisted for later dates–had dropped from 27% at the end of 2023 to 25% in September 2024.55 MoJ acknowledged that this rate remained “far too high”, and it is much higher than the pre– pandemic rate, which the NAO’s report shows was consistently close to 15% between 2014 and 2019.56 MoJ attributed the high proportion of ineffective trials to “running the system much hotter”, arguing that increasing the number of sitting days inevitably leads to an increase in ineffective trials.57 MoJ confirmed that judicial capacity is no longer a constraint on the number of trials that can be listed, but we were concerned to hear that over–listing of cases has contributed to the increased proportion of ineffective trials. While it is right that a degree of over–listing occurs to ensure that court time is not wasted when cases do not go ahead for unavoidable reasons, as we have already noted there is a huge impact on victims when their 50 Qq 78, 79 51 Q 81 52 Qq 9, 15, 25, 44, 45, 47 53 Q 33 54 Qq 32–33; C&AG‘s Report, para 18 55 Q 6; C&AG‘s Report, para 2.18 56 Q 6; C&AG‘s Report, Figure 9 57 Q 6 17 cases do not proceed on the day expected. HMCTS told us that there is an assessment of listing policies under way by the judiciary, and we look forward to its report, which is due in the spring.58
From: Public Accounts Committee, 12th Report - Crown Court backlogs (HC 348), 5 March 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth report from Session 2024-25
Published 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each recommendation in the report, while setting out that current actions "alone are not enough to reduce the outstanding caseload" and that "substantial reform" is required.
- On a plan while the Leveson Review is awaited, it lists current measures and says it "looks forward to receiving" the Independent Review's recommendations in Spring 2025. It states that work is "already underway" on swift implementation, with a target of July 2025.
- On remand, it says listing is for the independent judiciary and that the Lord Chancellor "will continue to discuss" prioritising remand cases with the Lord Chief Justice. It "will consider further steps" once the Independent Review reports.
- On remand data, it "anticipate[s]" improved insights on time spent on remand by the end of March 2026, and will "aim to include them" in the relevant publication by April 2027.
- On AI and digitisation, further use is described as "dependent on Spending Review (SR) funding" and subject to further pilots. Decommissioning of the legacy systems Xhibit and Libra is "currently planned" for completion by Spring 2027.