Civil servants overestimate court backlogs under Tories by up to 9,000

Court

Civil servants have been blamed for record crown court backlogs looking worse than they actually are.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had to postpone the publication last week of its latest statistics on the state of Britain’s courts because of “the quality of key data inputs”.

The Telegraph can now reveal that officials believe errors in the data may mean that the department has overestimated the scale of the backlog by as many as 9,000 cases.

This means the record backlogs – causing delays of up to two years in victims’ and defendants’ cases coming to court – may not be more than 67,000 but as low as 58,000.

The record backlogs stem from court closures during the pandemic and the barristers’ strikes. They have led to angry criticism of the Government over its handling of the criminal justice system and alleged failure to fund it effectively.

But the errors, if confirmed, mean that the incoming government could benefit from lower-than-expected backlogs although it will have to revise the department’s targets for reducing delays.

Failed to hit reducing delays target

The National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, lambasted the Government in June for failing to hit its target date for reducing delays. It said the MoJ’s aim of reducing the crown court backlog from a record 68,000 cases in May 2024 to 53,000 by March 2025 was “no longer achievable”.

It is not known how far the errors go back and whether they could extend to pre-pandemic backlogs which dropped to a 10-year low of 33,361 in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Sources said statisticians and officials were still investigating the cause of the blunder but it is understood the published data counted cases that had been completed and closed as still being open and live.

Court backlogs are one of two major headaches facing an incoming justice secretary with prisons feared to run out of space this summer.

The prisons crisis and associated court backlogs have been identified as one of the top priorities for an incoming Labour government by Sue Gray, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, in what has been euphemistically called her “s--t” list of problems.

Shabana Mahmood, who is expected to take up the post if Labour wins the election on Thursday, has refused to detail precise policies until the party has “looked under the bonnet” to understand the scale of the problems.

Freeing thousands of prisoners early

Speeding up the clearing of backlogs by sentencing more defendants would put greater pressure on overcrowded prisons.

Officials are expected to present options including freeing early thousands of prisoners by reducing the time they serve from 50 per cent of their sentence to 40 or 43 per cent. They could also resurrect Tory proposals for most jail sentences under 12 months to be replaced with suspended sentences.

However, some policy experts who have discussed the plans with Labour believe the party may be reluctant to make the early release of prisoners and scrapping jail sentences for shoplifters and thieves one of its first law and order announcements.

“They will want to see what the data actually shows and test the Ministry of Justice’s modelling before making any decisions,” said one source.

Labour has pledged to overhaul the planning system to give the Government emergency powers to fast track nationally significant infrastructure projects such as prisons but this will not provide any immediate relief to the overcrowding.

It is also committed to setting up 80 rape courts to tackle backlogs and recruit more crown prosecutors to drive down delays.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, we have delayed publication while HMCTS reviews the data that underpins the criminal court statistics. We will publish the statistics when the review is complete.”

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