Question to the Minister of Justice

Minister's Answer

The speeding up justice programme is a five-year programme of work driven by the Criminal Justice Board and aimed at reducing avoidable delay across the criminal justice system. The programme is part of the Executive's Programme for Government delivery, specifically with regard to the safer communities priority and underpinned by the reform and transformation of public services priority.

The programme comprises five projects: out-of-court disposals; early engagement; committal reform; remit of the Magistrates' Court; and digital. The early engagement and out-of-court disposals projects are supported by £20·5 million of transformation funding.

Work on out-of-court disposals is advancing at pace, and I hope to bring forward secondary legislation on that in the coming months that should see expanded powers for police officers to deal with lower-level offences by way of penalty notices. That will help to divert cases that involve lower-level offending away from prosecution through the courts, where they are currently attracting only monetary fines, and ensure that finite criminal justice resources are used effectively.

Building on the first phase of committal reform, work is progressing on the next phase — direct committal — which I plan to implement in November 2026. That will allow the most-serious cases to progress more quickly to Crown Court. That is supported by early engagement, which is exploring opportunities for early engagement between police, prosecution and defence so that cases move faster through the system.

Work is progressing on a number of initiatives, including measures to improve file quality and taking learning from the better case management processes used in England and Wales. I am progressing work on the remit of the Magistrates' Court project, which is exploring options to expand the jurisdiction of Magistrates' Courts, enabling cases to be handled in a more proportionate manner and helping to reduce backlogs in the court system.

All the projects will be supported by digital initiatives, which can help to make the projects more sustainable in the long term. Taken collectively, the programme should rebalance resources, where lower-level offending will be dealt with outside formal court processes, releasing much-needed resources to deal with the most serious offending.