Recommendation 28

We asked witnesses for a breakdown of the £477 million received in the 2021 Spending Review, and an outline of what it achieved. We were told that it “depends on what the counterfactual is”. Without that funding, MoJ told us that the backlog would have been “even worse” and that it did “as much as it could”.79 We are aware that departments will be preparing bids to the current Spending Review and that MoJ is awaiting the results of the independent Leveson Review, which is considering fundamental reforms to the criminal justice system. In this context, we asked MoJ whether it was confident that it will receive the resources it needs to implement the reforms and tackle the backlog, and in reply MoJ told us it does not want to prejudge the outcome of the Leveson Review but that it would advise against accepting recommendations from the review without the resources to deliver them.80