Forty-Third Report - Reducing the backlog in criminal courts
Select Committee
Public Accounts Committee
HC 643
9 March 2022
Recommendations
1 results
5
Deferred
Vulnerable users and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are potentially impacted disproportionately by efforts to...
Recommendation
Vulnerable users and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are potentially impacted disproportionately by efforts to tackle the Crown Court backlog, which the Department and HMCTS have not done enough to understand. Since the start of the pandemic, HMCTS significantly increased …
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Government Response Summary
The government will evaluate the experience of victims, witnesses and defendants in criminal courts as part of the HMCTS reform evaluation, with findings anticipated in Autumn 2024, and will work with partners to improve data collection, while monitoring relevant metrics, including exploring additional ones, to better understand the experience of victims from all backgrounds.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (3) Observations and findings — click to expand
15
Conclusion
Deferred
Since the start of the pandemic, the Department and HMCTS have significantly increased the use of hearings held remotely using video technology, and plan to continue to use them to reduce the backlog in the courts.25 We asked what impact the increased use of remote hearings has had on different …
Government Response Summary
The government will consider the experience of criminal court users as part of the HMCTS reform evaluation, with findings anticipated in Autumn 2024, and will work with partners to improve data collection, while monitoring relevant metrics, including exploring additional ones, to better understand the experience of victims from all backgrounds.
16
Conclusion
Deferred
The Department told us that the use of remote hearings is at the discretion of the judge in each individual case, and that everybody is entitled to have their reasonable adjustments considered by the judge. However, a third of people who requested reasonable adjustments said their request was not granted. …
Government Response Summary
The government will consider the experience of criminal court users as part of the HMCTS reform evaluation, with findings anticipated in Autumn 2024, and will work with partners to improve data collection, while monitoring relevant metrics, including exploring additional ones, to better understand the experience of victims from all backgrounds.
17
Conclusion
Deferred
We also asked about the impact of the pandemic on black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals, particularly given that the Department has faced difficulties collecting and analysing data on ethnicity in the past. Since the Lammy review in 2017 into the experiences of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system, …
Government Response Summary
HMCTS will consider the experience of criminal court users as part of the evaluation of HMCTS reform, with findings anticipated in Autumn 2024; the MoJ will also work to improve data collection on ethnicity across the criminal justice system.