Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
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)
The NAO report charts a sharp increase in 2022 in the number of ineffective trials due to the unavailability of counsel, when it went up to 4,136 compared to 279 in 2021. While the impact of industrial action by the Criminal Bar Association in 2022 is clear, it is concerning that the number of trials that did not go ahead for this reason in 2023, after the industrial action had finished, remained many times that for the years before 2022.59 MoJ acknowledged that the number of barristers and solicitors working on criminal cases had been in long–term decline.60 It pointed to a recent upturn in the number of barristers working more than 80% of their time on criminal cases, from 2,424 in 2020–21 to 2,726 in 2023–24, which it attributed to it increasing legal aid fees following the review by Sir Christopher Bellamy.61 Although MoJ acknowledged that the decrease in the number of solicitors was only “stabilising”, it pointed to the recent increase in fees for solicitors which has yet to have an effect.62 Although MoJ told us that the number of trials that do not go ahead on the scheduled day because of an absence of prosecution or defence barristers is beginning to decrease, we remain concerned.63
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.