Aylesbury Crown Court is facing an increasing backlog of cases, figures show. A Parliamentary report has warned that the coronavirus pandemic has left the courts system in England and Wales in “crisis”, with a backlog of cases that will take years to clear. Ministry of Justice figures show that Aylesbury Crown Court had 633 outstanding cases at the end of December. This was an increase of 8.4 per cent from the end of September and 35.5 per cent at the end of 2019, when there were 467. The Lords Constitution Committee has urged the Government to set out urgent plans, including new funding, to stop public confidence in the justice system being undermined.
Access to justice was patchy before the pandemic. Now it is imperilled
We can fill in the holes in the justice system if the courts service is given the funding and data it needs
Photo: Ken Biggs / Alamy Stock Photo
A well-functioning justice system is essential to a well-functioning society. Yet our justice system had been neglected for years before the pandemic hit. This exacerbated the devastating impact of Covid-19 on our courts and tribunals.
Not long after Covid-19 changed life as we know it, the House of Lords Constitution Committee, which I chair, launched an inquiry into the constitutional implications of the pandemic. Now we have published the first of three reports on this subject, which looks at the impact of Covid-19 on courts and tribunals in England and Wales.
SIR – I hope Vernon Bogdanor is right in saying that the Dunlop report on strengthening the Union, completed in 2019, is to be published at long last.
I was assured again and again in the Lords that it would appear before the end of 2020. Some recommendations, I was told, were being put into effect.
Why then the continuing secrecy on the part of a government that is supposed to be firmly committed to the Union? We have been cursed for too long by the policy of “devolve and forget”, as Professor Bogdanor says.
It is erroneous, however, to say that in the past “devolve and forget” in Northern Ireland “legitimised discrimination by a majority-ruled Stormont against the minority Catholic population”. Discrimination was practised, above all in housing, by both Unionist and nationalist local councils.
The government has used Brexit to bulldoze parliamentary process. Enough is enough
As chair of parliament’s constitution committee, I have witnessed up close the attempt to evade oversight. A reset is overdue
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It’s over. The UK has finally left the European Union. It has been a long, complex and contentious journey but, as the government likes to remind us, we have now “taken back control” of our laws. That may be cause for celebration for some, but it is worth considering where our new control centre is located. How will this renewed legislative sovereignty be exercised? There are already good reasons to fear that the balance is slipping away from parliament and into the hands of an executive not known for its love of scrutiny. And that is cause for real…