Massive delays in the court system will only get worse, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has admitted. Victims of serious offences such as rape and sexual assault are already waiting three years for trials and there is a record waiting list of 73,105 cases waiting to be heard in crown courts.
But Ms Mahmood admitted the backlog will “go up and up”. She said: “I’m obviously not comfortable. I’ve inherited a shocking situation where cases have been waiting for years to be heard and … are regularly cancelled. And since I’ve been in office, I have increased the number of crown court sitting days in one year … I’ve gone even further for the following year in 2025-26 … I have acknowledged that even with sitting at maximum capacity and with record funding, this backlog is only going to go up and up.”
Speaking on Times Radio, she also played down suggestions that significant extra cash could be given to the court system to fix the problems.
She said: “I think we achieved a good settlement in phase one of the spending review. Every part of Government has had to make difficult decisions. No department has been saved from making difficult choices.
“We inherited a bunch of promises that the Tories had made that they’d not made the funding available for. We’ve been getting all of that sorted out. It has meant difficult choices. There’s no pretending that there are further difficult choices to come.”
Victims Commissioner Baroness Newlove this week warned that the number of trials postponed on the day has skyrocketed. The number of completed crown court cases where the trial was rescheduled more than three times on the very day of the trial has quadrupled, surging from 20 in 2019-20 to 87 in 2023-24.
She said: “For far too many victims, justice now feels out of reach. For those affected by the most serious crimes, reporting has become a years-long ordeal.
“These delays don’t just prolong the process – they deepen the trauma. Victims’ lives are put on hold, relationships are strained, and their jobs and prospects are threatened. Justice should never come at such a cost.”
A report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee highlighted the backlog’s devastating impact on victims of crime. It said many find the court process as traumatic as the crime itself, and the long delays make this worse. Many rape victims choose to give up on the court process allowing their attackers to go free, the MPs said.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, chairman of the committee, said: “The Government agrees with this committee that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. For a country where the common law originated, we should aspire to have the best functioning criminal justice system in the world.
“All parts of the system must act optimally together. It is therefore disappointing that the crown courts backlog is now at a record high of 73,000, compared to a record low of 33,290 in March 2019 pre-Covid. This can have particularly severe consequences for some victims and their families. For example, victims of rape and serious sexual offences can wait for three years or more for these cases to come to trial.
“In 2024, 59% of victims of adult rape dropped out of the justice system because research shows they could not bear the trauma any longer. The number of ineffective trials currently stands at a staggering 25%.”